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Our Knowledge Accumulates as a Result of Learning

15 January, 2016 - 09:15

People have many memories about their experiences with other people, and they use this information to make predictions about what people will do in the future. This knowledge is gained through learning. The study of learning is closely associated with the behaviorist school of psychology, which includes the psychologists John B. Watson and B. F. Skinner. For behaviorists, the fundamental aspect of learning is the process of conditioning, the ability to connect stimuli (things or events in the environment) with responses (behaviors or other actions). The behaviorists described two types of conditioning that are particularly important: operant conditioning (also known as instrumental conditioning) and classical conditioning (also known as respondent conditioning). When applied to human behavior, these two processes are frequently called, respectively, operant learning and associational learning.