Lightning is associated with thunder and regularly precedes it. thus, when we see lightning, we often anticipate that we will hear thunder soon afterward. learning that these two stimuli are associated is an example of

I believe the answer is: Classical conditioning

Classical conditioning refers to the process when a biologically potent stimulus is paired with a netural stimulus in order to produce a certain type of response every time the subject is faced with the neutral stimulus. This process was first introduced by a popular psychologist named Ivan Pavlov.