ABSTRACT
In both respondent and operant conditioning a person or animal acquires behavior that the individual did not previously possess. Two general names for this are conditioning and acqui sition. (See Appendix A for a mathematical treatment of acquisition and extinction in both respondent and operant conditioning.) After acquisition of a conditioned response, continued pairing of the conditioned and unconditioned stimuli (in the case of respondent conditioning) or continued reinforcement of the conditioned response (in the case of operant conditioning) will cause the conditioned response to keep occurring. This is called behavioral maintenance. If after the conditioned response has been acquired, however, the unconditioned stimulus or the reinforcer ceases to occur while the conditioned stimulus or conditioned operant response continues to occur, the conditioned response will decrease to the level it was at prior to condi tioning (typically, zero). This, as we have seen, is extinction. We now look at some of the major factors affecting the acquisition and extinction of both respondent and operant behavior.
