Learning is not a set of reflexes that are determined genetically but rather a set of behavior that is learned by organisms through experiments.

Learning is more prominent n those organisms that have a longer life span.

This set of behavior helps an organism to adapt and survive environmental complexities.

In this blog, we will learn the types of learnings through the experiments performed by psychologists.

Habituation

An animal or an organism learns to ignore a repeated stimulus and interprets it as unimportant as it is not harmful.

For example- City cats or dogs are not scared of humans or vehicles as they have learned to ignore them because they are not offering any harm to them.

Or when the squirrel feels threatened they go to the nearest refugee to seek help.

But if the refugee keeps seeking false alarms, they will learn to ignore it and will start interesting it as not harmful.

Imprinting

Imprinting is a type of learning where the very young organism fixes its attention on the first object with which it has the visual, auditory, or tactile experience and thereafter it follows that object and identifies it as its mother.

The specific time when imprinting occurs is known as the critical period.

In the 1930s, Konard Lorenz showed the principle of imprinting in gray-leg geese.

When the incubator hatched goslings spent their first few hours with Lorenz rather than their mother or a different goose.

They imprinted with him and followed him from then on.

Furthermore, they showed no recognition of their mother or any kind of their own species.

Classical Conditioning

Learning. When an animal learns the same response to two different stimuli which are given to it simultaneously is called classical conditioning.

Pavlov paired the meat powder with the ringing of the bell and then presented it to the dog.

He did this multiple times with the dog that whenever he served him the meat powder, he would always ring the bell.

After doing this multiple times, he only rang the bell and did not serve the meat powder, which resulted in the dog salivating s if the meat was served to him.

The dog paired up these two stimuli and interpreted the ringing of the bell as if the food will be served with it.

In this case, the bell becomes the conditioned stimulus and the salivation becomes the conditioned response.