Final answer:
Operant conditioning is the type of associative learning where organisms learn to associate behaviors with their consequences, usually involving positive reinforcement or punishment to influence the likelihood of behaviors being repeated.
Step-by-step explanation:
The learned association between behaviors and resulting events is central to operant conditioning, a form of associative learning. In operant conditioning, organisms learn to associate their own behavior with its consequences. For instance, a dolphin like Spirit at the National Aquarium in Baltimore would learn to perform a flip when a whistle is blown in anticipation of receiving a fish, which acts as a positive reinforcement, thereby making the behavior more likely to be repeated. On the contrary, an unpleasant consequence might serve as a punishment and decrease the likelihood of the behavior occurring again. This type of conditioning can be observed in various animal training methods, where behaviors are continually modified by reinforcements or punishments.