A tough question, which actually gets at the heart of some important
theoretical issue. One could make an argument for either or both.
If I had to choose one way or another, I would say classical. A
conditioned stimulus (the whistle) is paired with an unconditioned stimulus
(food) which normally elicits a feeding response. The whistle then comes
to elicit feeding. This is a situation not unlike autoshaping.
On the other hand, the whistle could be viewed as a discriminative stimulus
which "sets the occasion" for feeding responses, in the sense that feeding
behavior is likely to be reinforced following the whistle. In this case,
it would be operant.
Of course, a number of theorists have argued that these are essentially the
same thing, but viewed from different perspectives.
That probably confused you more....
-- Jim
At 10:29 PM 11/16/99 -0600, you wrote:
>On Psych-News, the high school psychology teachers counterpart to TIPS, we
>have been having a minor debate on the following example.
>
>A MIT student went to the Harvard football stadium and blew a whistle then
>threw birdseed on the stadium floor. Birds came flocking.. He continued
>this for a number of days. On opening day of football season when the
>official blew the whistle - guess what?? birds came flocking..delaying the
>game..
>
>We'd appreciate it if some of the learning specialist on TIPS could help us
>resolve the issue? Is the above example classical or operant conditioning?
> Why or why not? Please respond to me at [EMAIL PROTECTED] or to TIPS.
>
>On a side note, to the best of our knowledge the example is an urban myth.
>
>Thanks in advance for your help,
>
>Kent Korek
>
>
>Kent Korek
>Germantown High School
>W180 N11501 River Lane
>Germantown, WI 53022
>262-253-3400
>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
