Arizona Educator Proficiency Assessments (AEPA) Early Childhood Education Practice Test

What psychological concept is demonstrated when a child begins to cry at the sight of a spider after witnessing a parent's fearful reaction?

1. Operant Conditioning

2. Social Learning

3. Classical Conditioning

4. Behaviorism

The correct answer is: Classical Conditioning

The correct answer is related to classical conditioning, which is a learning process that occurs when a previously neutral stimulus becomes associated with a response due to pairing with an unconditioned stimulus. In this scenario, the child initially does not have a fear of spiders. However, after observing a parent exhibit a fearful reaction to a spider, the child begins to cry. This crying indicates that the child has developed an emotional response to the spider that mirrors the parent's response. This process shows that the child's fear of spiders is learned by associating the sight of the spider (neutral stimulus) with the parental fear (unconditioned response). As a result, the child learns to associate the spider with fear, leading to an emotional response when encountering it. The fear of the spider has been conditioned through the child's observation of the parent's behavior. The other concepts, such as operant conditioning and behaviorism, focus more on how behaviors are reinforced or shaped through rewards and consequences, rather than learning through observation and emotional responses. Social learning does involve observing others, but in this case, the specific process at play is about the direct emotional response linked to the stimulus.