Arizona Educator Proficiency Assessments (AEPA) Practice Exam

The correct answer, classical conditioning, refers to a learning process in which a neutral stimulus becomes associated with a meaningful stimulus, resulting in a reflexive response. This occurs through a series of pairings between the two stimuli. For example, in Pavlov's experiment with dogs, the sound of a bell (neutral stimulus) was paired with the presentation of food (meaningful stimulus). Over time, the dogs learned to salivate in response to the bell alone, demonstrating how a reflexive response can be trained to an originally unrelated stimulus.

In contrast, operant conditioning focuses on the relationship between behavior and its consequences, rather than associating stimuli to elicit a reflexive response. Cognitive development is concerned with the progression of a child's ability to think and understand the world, while behavior modification involves changing behaviors through various techniques, often using principles from both operant conditioning and classical conditioning. Nonetheless, it is classical conditioning that specifically illustrates the training of a reflexive response to an unrelated stimulus.