Traditionally, learning has been regarded as a more general conception than conditioning. Conditioning which includes two sub varieties called classical and instrumental conditioning, is a form of learning, which occurs in carefully controlled laboratory situations. Some theorists believe that all learning obeys the laws discoverable in these simple conditioning experiments. Others feel that additional principles will be required to explain the more complex forms of learning.
The more general term learning has been defined in two generally different ways. Definitions of the first sort describe learning as any relatively permanent change in behavior, which occurs as a result of practice. There are four points at which such definitions require comment or clarification.
First, it must be recognized that changes in behavior, which are basic to the definition, are performance phenomena, whereas learning is a hypothetical process, which underlies these changes. Depending upon other circumstances, performance may reflect the level of learning relatively accurately or inaccurately. (Enser, L. D. 1976).
Second, unless some reference is made to the process of reinforcement, definitions of this sort fail to distinguish learning from extinction. Reinforcement, in one sense, refers to any of a set of conditions which, appropriately employed, favor learning. In the same sense, reinforcement is essential to learning. Unreinforced practice produces only fatigue or extinction. For purposes of definition, it is unfortunate that the conditions, which qualify as reinforcers, are quite varied and appear to fit no recognizable category beyond their ability to produce learning. This leads to an inevitable element of ambiguity in the definition of learning. (Gregory A. Kimble, Ernest Ropiequet Hilgard, Donald George Marquis, 1961 )
Third, another inescapable source of ambiguity lies in the term practice. Efforts to make this term mean anything exact lead to questions about the precise events, which go to make up a practice.........
