The First Six Definitions.

Learning: acquiring new knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, or preferences and may involve synthesizing different types of information. The ability to learn is possessed by humans, animals and some machines.

Associative Learning: A type of learning principle based on the assumption that ideas and experiences reinforce one another and can be linked to enhance the learning process.

Classical conditioning:  A process of behavior modification by which a subject comes to respond in a desired manner to a previously neutral stimulus that has been repeatedly presented along with an unconditioned stimulus that elicits the desired response.

Operant Conditioning: A process of behavior modification in which the likelihood of a specific behavior is increased or decreased through positive or negative reinforcement each time the behavior is exhibited, so that the subject comes to associate the pleasure or displeasure of the reinforcement with the behavior.

Behaviorism:  A school of psychology that confines itself to the study of observable and quantifiable aspects of behavior and excludes subjective phenomena, such as emotions or motives.

Observational Learning: learning that occurs as a function of observing, retaining and, in the case of imitation learning, replicating novel behavior executed by others.