Classical, operant, and observational are all types of conditioning
             and learning. Conditioning, in psychology, is causing an organism to
             exhibit a specific response to a stimulus. A stimulus is anything that
             Classical conditioning is a form of learning, in which a reflexive or
             automatic response transfers from one stimulus to another. For instance,
             a person who has had painful experiences at the dentist's office may
             become fearful at just the sight of the dentist's office building. Fear, a
             natural response to a painful stimulus, has transferred to a different
             stimulus, the sight of a building. Most psychologists believe that classical
             conditioning occurs when a person forms a mental association between two
             stimuli, so that encountering one stimulus makes the person think of the other.
             People tend to form these mental associations between events or stimuli that
             occur closely together in space or time.
             Classical conditioning was discovered by accident by Russian
             physiologist Ivan Pavlov. Pavlov was studying how saliva aids the digestive
             process. He would give a dog some food and measure the amount of saliva
             the dog produced while it ate the meal. After the dog had gone through this
             procedure a few times, however, it would begin to salivate before receiving
             any food. Pavlov believed that someme new stimulus, had become
             associated with the food and produced the response of salivation in the dog.
             After an animal has learned a conditioned response to one stimulus, it may
             also respond to similar stimuli without training. If a child is bitten by a large
             black dog, the child may fear not only that dog, but other large dogs. This is
             called generalization. Less similar stimuli will usually produce less
             After studying classical conditioning in dogs and other animals,
             psychologists became interested in how this type of learning might
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