In order to fully comprehend classical and operant conditioning , first we need to understand what exactly behaviourism is and what it focuses on. This essay will outline behaviourism and look at the explanations for how we learn, these include classical and operant conditioning. Both learning methods have several practical applications used to treat people, these will also be discussed.
Behaviourist’s believe that when you are born your mind is blank and behaviorism focuses on learning based on the concept that all actions are acquired through conditioning processes. John Watson who was considered “the father of behavioursim”, argued that conditioning occurred through interaction with the environment and our responses to the environmental stimuli shape our behaviours.
Conditioning can be separated into two types, classical and operant. Classical Conditioning is defined as the conditioning of reflexes so that they occur in response to new situations. It was first discovered by Ivan Pavlov when he was working on dogs, studying their digestive systems. He noted that the dogs produced saliva when a bell(auditory stimulus) and food (unconditioned stimulus) were presented together. Eventually the bell alone(conditioned stimulus) would come to evoke the salivating response(conditioned response) . The link between the saliva and the bell is defined as conditioned stimulus and response because the dogs were conditioned to associate the bell with receiving the food. However if the connection never reinforced after it is made, then eventually it will extinguish, know as extinction.
Classical conditioning has a number of “real life” applications, which are used to treat people with certain types of phobias, psychiatric problems or disorders. Behaviour therapy is more commonly used to treat phobias by breaking the association between the stimulus and the undesired