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Learning refers to any enduring change in the way an organism responds based on its experience.

In classical conditioning, an environmental stimulus leads to a learned response through pairing an unconditioned stimulus (UCS) with a previously neutral conditioned stimulus (CS), or learned reflex.
An unconditioned response (UCR) is a response that does not have to be learned.
Pavlov's experiment:
- A dog was repeatedly fed when a bell rang.
- Eventually, the dog started to salivate (conditioned response) when it heard the bell (conditioned stimulus), even without food.
- UCS \rightarrow UCR
- CS \rightarrow CR
Conditioned responses can be adaptive or maladaptive; examples include taste aversions and immune responses.
Stimulus generalization: An organism responds to stimuli similar to the CS with a similar response.
Stimulus discrimination: An organism learns to respond to a restricted range of stimuli.
Extinction: A conditioned response is weakened by presenting the CS without the UCS.
Classical conditioning is influenced by:
- Interstimulus interval
- How predictive the CS is of the UCS
- Individual's learning history
- Prepared learning

Operant conditioning involves learning to operate on the environment to produce a consequence.
Operants are behaviors that are emitted rather than elicited by the environment.
Reinforcement: A consequence that increases the probability that a response will recur.
Punishment: A consequence that decreases the probability that a response will recur.
Extinction: The operant behavior decreases when it's no longer followed by the previously associated consequences.
Operant conditioning is influenced by cultural factors and the characteristics of the learner.

Cognitive-social theory incorporates conditioning concepts from behaviorism but adds cognition and social learning.
Humans develop mental images and expectations about the environment, which influence their behavior.
Social learning: Learning that occurs through social interaction.

Skinner's principles of learning are central to understanding behavior.
Many psychologists disagree with Skinner's belief that scientific explanation is incompatible with interpretations of mental processes.

Learning a song effortlessly vs. mastering difficult course material through specific study techniques.
Learning is central to adaptation; distinguishing edible from inedible foods or friends from enemies is essential for survival.
Learning is about prediction, using past experience to guide behavior.

Reflex: A behavior elicited automatically by an environmental stimulus.
Stimulus: Something in the environment that elicits a response.
Habituation: The decreasing strength of a reflex response after repeated presentations of the stimulus.

Experience shapes behavior.
Learning is adaptive; the environment selects adaptive behaviors.
Careful experimentation can uncover laws of learning that apply to both human and non-human animals.

Learning theory is the foundation of the behaviorist perspective, focusing on classical and operant conditioning (associative learning).

The concept of association unites behavioral and cognitive approaches.
Aristotle's laws of association:
- Law of contiguity: Events experienced close together in time become connected.
- Law of similarity: Objects that resemble each other are likely to become associated.
Associationism: Complex thoughts are elementary perceptions that become associated.

Principles of association are fundamental to behaviorist and cognitive theories and have a neural basis involving changes at the synapse.

To what extent are humans like other animals in how they learn?
How has evolution constrained the way we learn?
To what extent can we understand learning without reference to mental processes?

Learning refers to any enduring change in the way an organism responds based on its experience.
Habituation refers to the decreasing strength of a reflex response after repeated presentations of the stimulus.
Learning theories assume that experience shapes behavior, that learning is adaptive, and that only systematic experimentation can uncover laws of learning.
Principles of association are fundamental to most accounts of learning.

the first type of learning to be studied systematically.
Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936) was studying the digestive systems of dogs
Classical conditioning occurs when we learn to identify a relationship between two different stimuli.

An innate reflex such as salivation to food is an unconditioned reflex. Conditioning is a form of learning; hence, an unconditioned reflex is a reflex that occurs naturally, without any prior learning.
The stimulus that produces the response in an unconditioned reflex is called an unconditioned stimulus (UCS).
An unconditioned response (UCR) is a response that does not have to be learned.
Shortly before presenting the UCS (the food), Pavlov presented a neutral stimulus a stimulus (in this case, ringing a bell) that normally does not elicit the response in question.
After the bell had been paired with the unconditioned stimulus (the food) several times, the sound of the bell alone came to evoke a conditioned response

Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS): A stimulus that produces a response without prior learning (e.g., food).
Unconditioned Response (UCR): A response that occurs naturally, without learning (e.g., salivation in response to food).
Conditioned Stimulus (CS): A previously neutral stimulus that, after association with the UCS, comes to elicit a conditioned response (e.g., bell).
Conditioned Response (CR): A learned response to a conditioned stimulus (e.g., salivation in response to the bell).
Acquisition: The initial stage of learning in which the conditioned response becomes associated with the conditioned stimulus.