Question

Imagine that you are a camp counselor or substitute teacher who is responsible for teaching a group of first-grade children. Respond to the following prompts in complete sentences in approximately 265–440 words.

1. Explain how classical conditioning works differently than operant conditioning. Include an example of classical conditioning that happens at home that could influence a student’s behavior at camp or in the classroom.

Answer 1

Ans.

Classical and operant conditioning are two important concepts central to behavioral psychology. Althiugh, both result in learning, the processes are quite different.

Ivan P. Pavlov gave the Classical conditioning. According to him, it refers to a process that involves creating an association between a naturally existing stimulus and a previously neutral one such as the sound of a bell, with an unconditioned stimulus i.e the taste of food.This unconditioned stimulus naturally and automatically triggers salivating as a response to the food, which refers to the unconditioned response. After associating the neutral stimulus and the unconditioned stimulus, the sound of the bell alone will start to evoke salivating as a response. And so the sound of the bell becomes the conditioned stimulus, and salivating in response to the bell further becomes its conditioned response.

An example of classical conditioning that happens at home that could influence a student’s behavior at camp or in the classroom involves teaching the child to stay in routine. So, the child can be made to learn the importance of waking up on time. This can be done by the parents through repeated conditioning of setting alarms for the child. The tone of alarm in the beginning is the neutral stimiulus. However, the child's mother coming to wake him up is the unconiditioned stimulus that the child needs to wake up. Further, the alarm tone i.e Neutral stimulus is paired with the mother coming at the same time to wake him up(Unconditioned stimulus). In this way after repeated trials, with the tone of alarm i.e Conditioned stimulus, the child wakes up automatically i.e Conditioned response as he has learned through conditioning that the ringing of alarm signifies waking up. Hence in this way classical conditioning helps in developing a healthy habit to wake up on time and this same habit would help him in the camp to wake up early.