Blog Post 8

In classical conditioning, you learn to link two or more stimuli and anticipate events. Seeing leaves change colors and feeling the temperature become cooler has always been one of the first signs that summer is turning into fall. Therefore, every year when the leaves start to change we expect cool temperatures and a new season too. With operant conditioning you link a behavior with a consequence. Positive response to the behavior will strengthen the behavior. Getting a good night’s sleep and then doing well on a test suggests that sleeping more will help you do better in school, so you keep doing it in order to get the same result. I think classical and operant conditioning has been crucial for humans and animals alike. Conditioning is what has allowed us to adapt to our environments and learn about our surroundings. If I hadn’t been able to learn from operant conditioning I also would not have learned to distinguish between good and bad behaviors. That means I may have never learned that brushing my teeth and flossing every day was a good thing or that having my shoes tied would keep me from tripping over my feet.

In my example for operant conditioning I said behaviors are linked with a consequence, or more specifically positive or negative reinforcements. My FBLA state adviser wants everybody on the team to check their email and respond to emails quickly so every now and then an email will say “the first person to respond to this email and finish the assignments below will receive a surprise in the mail.” Sometimes the surprise is candy or an FBLA keychain. Even though I never know what the surprise might be or which email is going to be the email that has the surprise inside, I still check my email often, just in case. This proves that positive reinforcement strengthens behavior by providing a pleasant stimulus.

Negative reinforcement also strengthens behavior, instead by reducing or removing an undesirable stimulus. Negative reinforcement sounds like punishment but the two are actually quite different. Negative reinforcement removes a punishing event. If I don’t have my homework done on the weekends my parents won’t allow me to go out with my friends. The idea of not being able to see my friends reinforces my behavior of always finishing my homework as soon as possible so I can have fun. If I didn’t finish my homework, the punishment would be staying home.

Punishment decreases the behavior it follows, but it won’t necessarily stop the behavior. Honestly, I have a hard time recalling a time where I’ve been punished. I’m a bit of a goody-goody, but I remember when I was younger that my brother would swear a lot so my parents would spank him and wash his mouth out with soap to get him to stop. Doing this made my brother stop swearing in front of my parents but he still swore in front of other people. My parents were successful in decreasing his behavior of swearing, but they didn’t end the behavior entirely.

Learning about learning has been a bit of an eye opening experience. First of all I’d never really thought about what the definition of learning is. Any time I learn something new I have to link it with a previous experience or something else I have learned or I have to learn by watching somebody else. Now I know that those processes are associative and observational learning, respectively. It doesn’t necessarily change how I think of things, but now I know why I think and learn the way I do. And when I don’t understand something or when I want to change something about myself I can use what I’ve learned to teach myself new behaviors.