When a baby presses a lever on his crib toy to make a certain noise, this is an example of what kind of learning?

Question

Classical conditioning

Shaping

Operant conditioning 

Answer 1

Operant conditioning - the baby repeats the behavior of pressing the lever because the consequence of the noise is reinforcing. Perhaps the baby finds the noise amusing or stimulating, or maybe the noise brings attention from people. Something about the noise is reinforcing to cause the baby to press the lever to make the noise. Operant condition is learning by consequence, whereas classical conditioning is learning by association. An example would be Pavlov's dogs who learned to salivate by hearing the bell in association with the sight and smell of meat. Shaping entails reinforcing successive approximations of a goal behavior. For example, if I am teaching my dog to go lie down on a mat, I would reinforce the behavior of looking at the mat, then going toward the mat, stepping on the map, and finally, lying down on the map. This enables me to keep the dog's interest and motivation through what we call a high rate of reinforcement. We use this method of training when teaching complex behaviors.