ABSTRACT
Three broad categories of learning phenomena are generally recognized. The first involves experience with a single event and is usually referred to as nonassociative learning. Examples of nonassociative learning include habituation and sensitization (see Chapter 5). The second category, associative learning, includes classical and instrumental conditioning, and is covered in this chapter and in Chapter 8. The role of conditioning in other learning phenomena is also highlighted in cases of perceptual or exposure learning, as in the case of imprinting and vocal learning in birds (see Chapter 12). The third category is that of cognitive learning, a set of phenomena that typically arise from conditioning but may develop beyond associative conditioning and demonstrate the acquisition of rules (see Chapter 9). Whether such cognitive forms of learning are reducible to conditioning processes is a matter of debate.
