Learning is any permanent change in behavior that can be attributed to experience. Learning isn't always the result of practice. It depends on what you mean by practice. Merely repeating a response will not necessarily produce learning. You could close your eyes and swing a tennis racket hundreds of time without learning anything about tennis.
             Reinforcement is the key to learning. Any event that increases the probability that a response will occur again is reinforcement. An example would be a person trying to teach a dog a trick could reinforce correct responses by giving the dog some food each time it sits up. Learning can also occur in other ways. For example if a girl got stung by a bee she could learn to fear bees. In this case the girls fear is reinforced by the pain she felt when she got stung.
             Unlocking the secrets of learning begins with noting what happens before and after a response. Events that precede a response are called antecedents. Consequences are effects that follow a response. Paying careful attention to the "before and after" of learning is a key to understanding it. An example of antecedents would be a bee stinging a girl. The consequence of that would be the girls arm being in pain.
             In Classical conditioning, antecedent events become associated with one another: A stimulus that does not produce a response is linked with one that does. In Operant Conditioning, learning is based on the consequences of responding. A response may be followed by reinforcement, such as food, or by punishment or nothing. These results determine whether a response is likely to be made again.
             Pavlov's classic demonstration of conditioning came about by accident. He was actually studying digestion. To observe salivation he placed meat powder on a dog's tongue. After a while of doing this he noticed that the dogs were salivating before the food reached their mouths. Later they dogs ...