Conditioning Type of psychology

Conditioning
Type of psychology: Learning
Fields of study: Instrumental conditioning; Pavlovian conditioning
Conditioning and learning are roughly synonymous terms. Both refer to changes in behavior
resulting from experience, but conditioning has a more specific meaning, referring
to changes in behavior that are the direct result of learning relationships between
environmental events. Two types of relationships are studied by learning psychologists.
The first involves learning the relationship between environmental events that consistently
occur together. The second involves learning the environmental consequences of
behavior. These two learning scenarios correspond to classical and operant conditioning
respectively.
Key concepts
• behavioral approach
• conditioned stimulus (CS)
• conditioned response (CR)
• contiguity
• Law of Effect
• operant response (R)
• reinforcing stimulus (Sr)
• schedules of reinforcement
• shaping
• unconditioned stimulus (US)
• unconditioned response (UR)
Learning refers to any change in behavior or mental processes associated
with experience. Traditionally psychologists interested in learning have
taken a behavioral approach which involves studying the relationship between
environmental events and resulting behavioral changes in detail.
Though the behavioral approach typically involves studying the behavior of
nonhuman subjects in controlled laboratory environments, the results that
have been found in behavioral research have often found wide application
and use in human contexts. Since the early twentieth century behavioral
psychologists have extensively studied two primary forms of learning, classical
and operant conditioning.