Name:                        Saw Hsar Lwe

Program:                OUHK-Cetana (Myanmar)

Student No:                10399429

Course:                SS101 Psychology 1 & 2

Assignment:                TMA 07        

Date:                        September 3, 2010

Learning approaches discovered by psychologists or physiologists are valuable in many areas of our lives. In terms of this, it is necessary to identify the way in which the meaning of learning is described in psychology discipline. As the principle of learning by association is regarded as the basic foundation of learning, it is also essential to understand the behaviorist approach in learning, especially classical condition. In addition, to comprehend the process of learning it is important to evaluate the contributions and limitation in applying this theory.

On all accounts, the way in which psychologists have defined learning varies in wording and detail from source to source. According to some popular learning texts the definition of learning can be identified as: “the acquisition, maintenance, and change of an organism's behavior as a result of lifetime events (Pierce & Cheney, 2004, p.1); “an enduring change in the mechanisms of behavior involving specific stimuli and/or responses that results from prior experience with similar stimuli and responses” (Domjan, 1998, p. 13); “a ... more or less permanent change in behavior potentiality which occurs as a result of repeated practice” (Flaharty, 1985, p.7, citing Kimble, 1961); “the change in a subject's behavior or behavior potential to a given situation brought about by the subject's repeated experiences in that situation, provided that the behavior change cannot be explained on the basis of the subject's native response tendencies, maturation or temporary states” (Bower & Hilgard, 1981, p. 11); “learning is a process of change as a result of experience” (Miell et al., 2002, pp.180); and “an experiential process resulting in a relatively permanent change in behavior that cannot be explained by temporary states, maturation, or innate response tendencies” (Klein, 1996, p. 2); “a relatively permanent change in an organism's potential for responding that results from prior experience or practice” (Gordon, 1989, p. 6). All of these definitions share the common theme that “learning is a relatively permanent change in the probability of exhibiting a certain behavior resulting from some prior experiences” (R.Mowrer, 2000, p. 2).

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Classical conditioning was developed by Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, a Russian physiologist. Classical conditioning means the study of learning which involves reflex responses, in which a neutral stimulus comes to elicit and existing reflex response (Glassman & Hadad, 2009, p.116).

So as to understand the classical conditioning we have to examine its process more closely. The principles of classical conditioning, including: unconditioned stimulus and response, and conditioned stimulus and response. In the first stage, when giving a dog some food it will salivates in response to the food. Here, salivating at the presence of food (stimulus) is a basic neural reflex that ...

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