Final answer:
Operant conditioning is a learning process where an animal associates a behavior with a reward or punishment, such as teaching a rat to press a lever for food or a dolphin to perform flips for fish.
Step-by-step explanation:
The concept the student is referring to is known as operant conditioning. It is a type of learning where an animal associates one of its behaviors with a reward or punishment. This process involves a response being followed by reinforcement or punishment to either strengthen or weaken it. If, for example, a rat is taught to 'play basketball' and is rewarded with food pellets for this behavior, it learns to associate the action with the reward. If the reward stops, the rat may eventually cease performing the behavior because the reinforcement no longer exists.
Conditioned behaviors are modified through this process. B.F. Skinner, a famous psychologist, demonstrated operant conditioning with rats in a Skinner box, where rats learned to press a lever to get food. This principle is also applied in animal training scenarios, such as teaching a dolphin to perform flips in exchange for fish.
Operant conditioning is different from classical conditioning, another type of associative learning, where an environmental trigger causes a reflexive response, and the animal is trained to react to a different stimulus.