Learning can affect many aspects of sexual behavior. Learning may increase or decrease an animal′s sensitivity to respond to internal and external stimuli which trigger its own sexual desire and indicate who is a potencial mate and what a sexual incentive is. This occurs as a result of two learning mechanisms, Pavlovian Conditioning and Instrumental (operant) conditioning. With the former, individuals learn to associate neutral stimuli with unconditioned responses, and therefore the stimuli may become conditioned, with the potential to predict sex and unconsciously may guide our sexual preferences. With Instrumental conditioning, an individual learns how to behave to obtain a certain response, which may help explain how non-sexual behavior may become so if they predict sex. In this paper we discuss the effects of learning in critical periods of life when individuals are more sensitive to become conditioned, and therefore learn to behave sexually.
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