Final answer:
Classical conditioning is demonstrated when an animal learns to connect a squirt of water with an electric shock, responding to the water as it would to the shock as a result of associative learning.
Step-by-step explanation:
When an animal learns to associate a squirt of water with an electric shock, they demonstrate the process of classical conditioning. This type of associative learning involves an organism learning to connect events, or stimuli, that repeatedly occur together (— for instance, if a neutral stimulus like a squirt of water is consistently paired with an unconditioned stimulus like an electric shock that elicits an unconditioned response such as discomfort, the animal will eventually respond to the squirt of water alone with fear or anxiety, a conditioned response). In the wild or in experimental conditions, animals and humans alike show evidence of classical conditioning when they start to respond in anticipation to a stimulus that has been paired with another, particularly one that has a significant consequence such as discomfort or a reward.