This is the case of stimuli that occasion novel responses. For example, if Sally learned to pick up a phone and talk on it with a friend, she has response generalization if she can also pick up a walkie talkie and use it to talk to a friend. For example, if a child learns to open the door when the doorbell rings during the day, if he also opens the door any time the phone makes a ringing sound similar to the door chime, that would be over-generalization.
Stimulus Generalization refers to the inability to discriminate between different stimulus. This is a case of different stimuli that evoke the same response.
Stimulus Discrimination occurs when a stimuli evoke a different response. For example, not all snakes are poisonous. My husband knows how to tell the difference between poisonous snakes and non — he has discriminated these stimulus and will catch a non-poisonous snake but avoid a poisonous one.
This is the perfect web site for anybody who would like to understand this topic. For example, imagine in school that children are expected to line up for lunch when they hear the ding of a bell. However, another similar sounding bell also rings when the kids are expected to sit in their desks for reading time. If stimulus generalization occurs, the children will have trouble determining which response they are supposed to give.
For example, the kids might all line up for lunch instead of sitting in their desks when the reading time bell sounds. Because of this, stimulus discrimination is also important. This involves the ability to distinguish between two similar stimuli.
For the school kids in our example, they might experience stimulus generalization at first, but as they become more familiar with their school schedule and the unique sound of each bell, they will eventually learn to discriminate between the two bells. Stimulus generalization can have an impact on the learning process in both classical and operant conditioning. Sometimes this generalization can be a good thing.
In school, kids may learn skills in one setting that can then be transferred over into similar situations. In other cases, it can lead to confusion and complication if there is a need to be able to distinguish between similar stimuli. Fortunately, people can learn how to tell the differences between similar stimuli and avoid stimulus generalization if necessary.
Though it should be noted, this experiment has been the subject of much debate and controversy in recent years. It is important to understand how stimulus generalization can influence responses to the conditioned stimulus. Once a person or animal has been trained to respond to a stimulus, very similar stimuli may produce the same response as well.
Sometimes this can be problematic, particularly in cases where the individual needs to be able to distinguish between stimuli and respond only to a very specific stimulus. For example, if you are using conditioning to train your dog to sit, you might utilize a treat to build an association between hearing the word "Sit" and receiving a treat.
Stimulus generalization might cause your dog to respond by sitting when she hears similar commands, which may make the training process more difficult.
In this case, you would want to use stimulus discrimination to train your dog to distinguish between different voice commands. A person who is afraid of spiders generally won't be afraid of just one type of spider. Instead, this fear will apply to all types and sizes of spiders.
The individual might even be afraid of toy spiders and pictures of spiders as well. This fear may even generalize to other creatures that are similar to spiders such as other bugs and insects.
Stimulus generalization can occur in both classical conditioning and operant conditioning. Little Albert's fear of white furry objects is a great example of how stimulus generalization works in classical conditioning.
While the child had originally been conditioned to fear a white rat, his fear also generalized to similar objects. In operant conditioning, stimulus generalization explains how we can learn something in one situation and apply it to other similar situations. Imagine that parents punish their son for not cleaning his room.
He eventually learns to clean up his messes to avoid punishment. Instead of having to relearn this behavior at school, he applies the same principles he learned at home to his classroom behavior and cleaned up his messes before the teacher can punish him.
However, a subject can be taught to discriminate between similar stimuli and only to respond to a specific stimulus. For example, imagine that a dog has been trained to run to his owner when he hears a whistle. After the dog has been conditioned, he might respond to a variety of sounds that are similar to the whistle. Because the trainer wants the dog to respond only to the specific sound of the whistle, the trainer can work with the animal to teach him to discriminate between different sounds.
Eventually, the dog will respond only to the whistle and not to other tones. In another classic experiment conducted in , researcher Shenger-Krestovnika paired the taste of meat which is the unconditioned stimulus in this instance with the sight of a circle. The dogs then learned to salivate which is the conditioned response whenever they saw the circle. Researchers also observed that the dogs would begin to salivate when presented with an ellipse, which was similar but slightly different than the circle shape.
After failing to pair the sight of the ellipse with the taste of meat, the dogs were able to discriminate eventually between the circle and ellipse.
Stimulus generalization can have an important impact on the response to a stimulus. Sometimes individuals are able to discriminate between similar items, but in other cases, similar stimuli tend to evoke the same response.
0コメント