Q: Q: (Initially posted on 8/8) FROM MENTEE KYNDRA C. IN KY
I need help with distinguishing between the following types of learning: imprinting, classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and insight learning. Can you help me understand the difference?

August 9, 2002
A: FROM MENTOR CAROL TOMAN. To read bio. click here.
Imprinting is a very low-level neurological function that appears at a
specific time during maturation that has survival value for young
birds -- they are destined to imprint on the thing they see moving
right after they hatch. This differs from the other processes you
list in that it is very specific in applicability (birds), time (right
after hatching), and method (it is visual and requires motion). The
two conditioning methods that you list are more general in that they
can be applied to pretty much any animal with a sufficiently complex
brain and they can be applied to "teach" a wide variety of behaviors.
Conditioning is not really "learning" though, it is "training". The
key difference between learning and training is that training does not
transfer to different circumstances. For example, training a rat to
push a red lever to get cheese and avoid the blue lever which gives a
shock can be done with conditioning. Put him in a cage with a red
rope and blue rope and the rat will most likely not expect the red
rope to provide food, but a human being probably would draw that
conclusion. That is because a human is capable of learning from the
training, and transfering that knowledge to new circumstances. I'm
not really sure what the term "insight learning" means, but it might
refer to this ability of humans (and probably a few other animals like
the other great apes, parrots, dolphins, etc.) to generalize their
prior experience into new situations. I'd recommend reading about the
differences between these terms in a textbook on psychology.