Prepare for the MCAT Psychological, Social, and Biological Foundations of Behavior Test. Study with flashcards and multiple choice questions with hints and explanations. Get ready for your exam!

Associative learning is also known as conditioning because it involves the process by which an individual learns to associate a particular stimulus with a specific response or behavior. This form of learning occurs when an organism makes a connection between two events, leading to a learned behavior.

For example, classical conditioning entails learning through association, where a neutral stimulus becomes associated with an unconditioned stimulus to elicit a conditioned response. Operant conditioning, another type of associative learning, involves learning through the consequences of behavior, where reinforcement or punishment influences the likelihood of a behavior being repeated.

While cognitive processing, insight learning, and social learning are important concepts in psychology, they do not specifically refer to the process of learning through associations between stimuli and responses, which is the core of associative learning. Thus, the term "conditioning" aptly encapsulates the essence of associative learning and is the correct answer.