In order to prove and understand a theory a psychologist must test their hypothesis, and to do so they must establish a case study involving learning styles. There are several widely used learning functions these include latent, insight learning and classical and operant conditioning. Latent and insight learning styles are compared to operant and classical conditioning, which were established and used by many in the field of psychology. The main objective of this paper is to determine if latent and insight learning differed significantly from operant and classical conditioning. As a group we came to determine that latent and insight learning do not differ significantly from classical and operant conditioning, but their objectives are what separate them from each other. Insight and latent learning do not differ significantly from classical and operant conditioning; instead they accomplish different goals using similar methods. Our group was comprised of 7 girls in first year, 6 of the 7 of are in Early Childhood Education, Alexandra Rouse, Sidney Miller, Melissa Napoli, Aleksandra Milkowska, Sarah Honen and Alessandra Cannova and one in Psychology Kayla Britton. .
Both latent learning and classical conditioning use repetition to acquire knowledge in the real world. Classical conditioning uses two stimuli that are related to one another to generate a new learned response. Using Pavlov's dogs as an example, the bell is the conditional stimulus because it depends on the association with the food. Every five minutes the dogs hear the bell and they correlate it with the reinforcement of food arriving then consequently salivate (Pulvermuller & Cook & Hauk, 2012). By Pavlov conducting this experiment multiple times it begins to form a routine for the animals. .
Latent learning is a type of learning that is not noticed instantly, but arises without any encouragement to display it. It incorporates prior knowledge about the world with ones current observations (Gershman & Niv, 2012).