ABSTRACT
Associative learning results association of two events that occur close together in time. The two events may be either two stimuli. Two names for these types of associative learning are respondent conditioning and operant conditioning. Respondent conditioning is also known as Pavlovian conditioning, after Ivan P. Pavlov, the first scientist to study it extensively, because it was the first type of conditioning to be studied. It is also referred to as stimulus-stimulus learning. Operant conditioning is also known as instrumental conditioning, because learning to make a response is instrumental to achieving the goal or objective. This is sometimes referred to as response-stimulus learning. A stimulus-response relationship whose existence depends primarily on phylogeny is called an unconditioned reflex. The stimulus member, generally a biologically significant event of the unconditioned reflex (UR), is called the unconditioned stimulus (US). Typically the new reflex consists of the neutral stimulus, now called the conditioned stimulus (CS), called the conditioned response (CR), which resembles the US.
