Learning Experience

Learning Experience Paper

Aaron Black

PSY/211

November 27th, 2013

Jennifer Henderson

Learning Experience Paper

In the realm of psychology, there are many different and unique components, perspectives, structures, theories, and methods. Along with many other important aspects, learning falls under the field of psychology. This paper will take a single learning experience and explain how an individual’s behavior and emotions can be affected by that experience. Describing how behaviors could have occurred through classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and observational learning will also be included. The learning experience in this paper is how an individual could have developed a fear of clowns.

By nature, humans are not afraid of clowns. This fear has been learned at some point or another in the individual’s life. First on this list is classical conditioning. Classical conditioning is a process of learning an association between two stimuli. There are four main terms in classical conditioning: Unconditioned stimulus (UCS), unconditioned response (UCR), conditioned stimulus (CS), and conditioned response (CR). When a UCS is presented, a UCR occurs. When the goal is to associate that same response using a different stimulus, pairing both stimuli together and presenting them at the same time will create a habit of expectation and association. The second stimulus is a CS and after it has been associated with the UCS from the subject, then the CS can produce the same response as the UCS. When this happens the response is called a CR. This information can be applied to how an individual could have learned to have a fear of clowns. Let us assume that as a baby this individual loved clowns. Then one day the child attends a circus. The child came to see the clowns, but let us assume the circus recently began using lions. When the lions (UCS) begin to roar the child becomes very scared (UCR). The sudden loud noise and threatening...