Difference Between Classical Conditioning And Operant Conditioning

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There are two types of learning, one is operant conditioning, and the other is classical conditioning. Operant behaviour is behaviour that is controlled through consequences. Operant conditioning consists of a behaviour, consequence (reinforcement or punishment) and likelihood of (staddon & cerutti, 2003). Skinner, who came up with this theory based his ideologies on the work of Thorndike, who had studied learning on animals using a puzzle box. He proposed the theory known as ‘the law of effect’ (Catania, 1999). From this skinner developed operant conditioning as he had set out to identify the processes which made certain behaviours more or less likely to occur. Skinner tested animals by placing them in skinner boxes and allowed them to …show more content…

He showed classical conditioning can be applied to animals. Pavlov demonstrated the presence of the unconditioned response by presenting a dog with food and calculating its salivary emissions. In this experiment, Pavlov had used a bell as a neutral stimulus. When he gave food to his subjects he also rang the bell. He then repeated this and attempted to ring the bell without giving food. The bell ringing on its own then increased the salvation from the dogs. This therefore implies that the dog had learned to associate food with the bell resulting in a new behaviour being learnt. This would then be known as a conditioned …show more content…

An example of this is Kimble (1961) who had identified that the basic principles of impulsive recovery and stimulation generalization are common to both types of learning. However there are perhaps more differences than similarities. In terms of responses, classical conditioning involves involuntary responses where as operant conditioning is heavily relies on voluntary responses. For cognitive processes, in classical conditioning the organisms develop an expectation that CS signals the arrival of US but for operant conditioning this is not the case as the organisms develop expectation that a response will be reinforced or

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