PSYC 100A Chapter Notes - Chapter 7: Operant Conditioning, Learning, Lightning

• School: University of Victoria
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 100A
• Professor: Martin Sherer Smith

Document Summary

Learning is the process of acquiring new and relatively enduring information or behaviors due to experience. Associative learning is the linking of two events that occur close together in time (classical and operant conditioning) By learning, we humans are able to adapt to our environments. We learn to expect and prepare for significant events such as food or pain (classical conditioning) We typically learning to repeat acts that bring rewards and avoid acts that bring unwanted results (operant conditioning) We learn new behaviours by observing events and watching others, and through language, we learn things we have neither experienced nor observed (cognitive learning) Learned associations also feed our habitual behaviours: as we repeat behaviours in a given context sleeping in a certain posture in bed, walking certain routes on campus the behaviors become associated with the contexts. In classical conditioning, we learn to associated two stimuli and thus to anticipate events.