Vicarious Conditioning Vs Operant Conditioning

Learning shapes behavior from the beginning to the end of one’s life. A child learns not to touch a hot stove after burning themselves, while an adult can go back to school to earn a degree. A kind of learning that changes one’s behavior is called conditioning. There are different forms of conditioning, such as classical conditioning that can be seen in an individual suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), or operant conditioning which is often used in dog training. If someone has a habit that annoys their friends, their friends might want to change that habit. This can be done using different methods of conditioning. Following that logic, I can use operant conditioning to alter the behavior of my roommate. Classical conditioning and operant conditioning, similarly, are both forms of learning that influence or alter behavior. Both methods consist of the same four components: acquisition, extinction, spontaneous recovery, and generalization and discrimination. The two methods are fairly different, though. Classical conditioning is defined as a pairing of a neutral stimulus with an unconditioned stimulus that brings about an unconditioned response. Then the previously neutral stimulus alone brings about the now conditioned response, making it a conditioned …show more content…
Vicarious conditioning is a form of observational learning, or learning through watching the behaviors of others. Similar to operant conditioning, vicarious conditioning is a form of learning through which certain behaviors generate certain consequences. Vicarious conditioning, however, happens when the behavior of one person is changed by observing the consequences of that same behavior done by another person. For example, when a group of second grade students are talking instead of reading, the teacher might yell at one of them. That causes the entire group to change their previous behavior of talking and start reading like they are supposed