Different Ways and Role of Learning - Essay Example

Whenever somebody shoots a gun, people start panicking. In this example panic is the unconditioned response to gunshot which is unconditioned stimuli. If this action is repeated again and again people will start believing that whenever a gun is used, it will shoot a bullet. Due to this even if the gun is surprisingly used and the bullet is not fired, people will start believing that the gun will be fired and they will panic.

Panicking at the sight of a gun without shooting the gun is called conditioned response and the sight of a gun becomes a conditioned stimulus. Another way of learning is operant conditioning proposed by B.F. Skinner. According to him, we can make people repeat a particular behavior or behavior that is learned and exhibited when reinforcement takes place (Hock, 2009, p.156). He stated that if a person is offered a positive stimulus for a particular behavior right after that behavior is conducted, the person will repeat the behavior and if a negative stimulus is removed as soon as a behavior is conducted, the response will less likely occur again and will become extinct in future. Another part of this form of learning is punishment.

Skinner states that if we want to decrease a certain behavior, we can use positive punishment and negative punishment. Positive punishment is the removal of something positive from the environment so the behavior is not exhibited again and negative punishment refers to the addition of something negative to the environment in order to make a particular behavior extinct. Both the operant and classical conditioning ways of learning require cognitive learning ability. This means that if learning has to take place then an individual should have the mental ability to understand a connection between the unconditioned stimuli and the unconditioned response and the conditioned stimuli and the conditioned response (Feldman, 2011, p.187).

Operant conditioning is better way of learning than classical conditioning because in operant conditioning any stimulus can be used as punishment or reward to make a particular behavior extinct or cause reproduction of any behavior. While on the other hand, in classical conditioning only one stimulus is used to conduct learning, thus this can cause issues as the same stimulus or some other stimulus that is a replica of the conditioned stimulus will result in the same response. Classical conditioning appears to be very interesting as through classical conditioning unrelated stimuli can be used to conduct learning. Read More