There are specific theories regarding the way living organisms learn and make connections between information. Learning is an important component of life; organisms need to be able to interact with their environment in an effective way. Many psychologists have taken an interest in the concept of learning, devising theories which explain how living organisms learn in their environments.
A psychologist, by the name of Pavlov, discovered a learning theory by the name of Classical Conditioning. Classical conditioning is a type of learning in which an organism can take two unrelated events and make a connection between them. He carried out this theory through an experiment which utilized dogs. Before conditioning, the dogs made no association between the ringing of a bell and salivating in anticipation of receiving food. Only when food was presented did the dogs start salivating. During conditioning, the bell was rung directly before the dogs were to receive food. The result of the experiment was that the dogs would salivate to the sound of the bell because they would anticipate the food coming.
Thorndike, another psychologist interested in the principles of learning, discovered the Operant Conditioning theory. This theory states that organisms can form associations between behaviors and resulting events. This means that based off of how a behavior is perceived by the environment, an organisms will either continue or discontinue it. The concept of shaping falls under this theory; reinforcers guide behavior closer to the ultimate desired behavior. An example of shaping would be teaching a dog how to roll over; once the dog performs an element of the final product, the individual training it must reward it with something to provide an incentive for them to continue.
I can relate these theories to a specific time in my life when I needed to personally apply them. I took psychology in high school and part of the curriculum included receiving and training a rat through the theories of learning. Once my class reviewed the theories, we received a rat and were instructed to train it in specific stages. We started simple, but by the end of a month we needed to have trained our rat to complete a complicated chain of tricks (climbing a ladder, walking on a tight rope, jumping off of a desk into someone’s hand) in one continuous run.
This is where the learning theories come into play. We were instructed to use clicker training, so our rat could form associations between a sound and a reward (much like classical conditioning). At first, our rat, Maizie, was terrified of this clicker noise. But, we reassured her through giving her food after she heard every click. After a while, she recognized that a click meant that she was about to receive one of her favorite snacks. The key to this was to be consistent, making sure we gave Maizie a treat after every click she heard. This is an example of classical conditioning because prior to conditioning, Maizie was unable to recognize that there was a connection between the click noise and receiving a treat. After conditioning took place, Maizie knew that hearing a click resulted in a treat.
After Maizie made the association between the click and a treat through classical conditioning, we were able to teach her more complex tricks through operant conditioning. We utilized the concept of shaping to teach her how to do things such as stand on her back legs, run through a maze, walk a tight rope, climb up and down a ladder. We did this by rewarding her with a treat after she heard a click when she did something correct. By rewarding her through every step of the process of learning a new trick, she was able to fully complete the task we asked of her.
As you can see, the theories of classical and operant conditioning were utilized in training my rat in my high school psych class. Through these theories, we were able to train Maizie successfully.