Psyc 387 Chapter 9

Front 1

What is generalization? Why is generalization such an important topic?

Back 1

The tendency for learned behavior to “spread” to situations not involved in training is called generalization. Generalization is of great value. It is often beneficial if behavior learned in one situation carries over to other situations

Front 2

What is discrimination? Why is discrimination a valuable ability?

Back 2

The tendency to behave differently in different situations is called discrimination. It would be a handicap if what was learned was carried over to situations where it was inappropriate.

Front 3

Provide and recognize original examples of generalization as it occurs in Pavlovian conditioning and operant conditioning. How did Watson and Rayner demonstrate generalization of Pavlovian conditioning in their work with Little Albert?

Back 3

Example: Pavlov’s dogs would salivate with a tuning fork at 1,000 cps or 950 cps. Albert’s fear had spread, or generalized, from the white rat to other white, furry objects.

Front 4

Stimulus generalization

Back 4

occurs when a response reinforced in the presence of a training stimulus causes that response to also occur with stimuli that are similar to the training stimulus. For example, children who are learning about frogs will often misidentify toads as frogs due to the similarity between the two.

Front 5

response generalization

Back 5

occurs when reinforcing a response class causes an increase in responses similar to that response. For example, if we train a child to dial his home phone number in preparation for possible emergency, the child's correct dialing responses increase along with dialing similar numbers

Front 6

How can generalization be increased? Describe the results of Eisenberger and his colleagues in inducing the generalization of desirable behavioral tendencies. What is learned industriousness? Provide and recognize original examples of learned industriousness.

Back 6

One way to increase generalization is to provide training in a wide variety of settings. Eisenberger found that rewarding a high level of effort on one task increases the level of effort on other tasks, a phenomenon called industriousness.
Comment: There is a tendency in psychology and other helping professions to invent names for problems and pathological conditions, as is done in medicine. The term “learned industriousness” is a refreshing exception to this general practice: it defines a desirable generalized behavioral tendency that educators should focus on as an instructional objective and a goal students should aspire to.

Front 7

Provide and recognize original examples of cases in which generalization is not helpful. Describe Dweck and Repucci's (1973) study illustrating this aspect of generalization.

Back 7

Dweck and Repucci: Teachers gave students unsolvable problems. Later these teachers gave the students problems that could be solved, but the students failed to solve them.

Front 8

What is a generalization gradient? Provide and recognize original examples of generalization gradients. Describe Guttman and Kalish's study of stimulus generalization in pigeons.

Back 8

A generalization gradient shows the tendency for a behavior to occur in situations that differ systematically from the training stimulus.
Guttman and Kalish: Birds learned to peck a disk of a certain color, and later had the opportunity to peck disks of all different colors. Pigeons pecked the disk color used in training most often, but also pecked the disk when it was other colors. The more closely the color resembled the training disk, the more likely the bird was to peck it.

Front 9

What is semantic generalization? Provide and recognize original examples of semantic generalization. Describe Razran's (1939) study of the semantic generalization of Pavlovian conditioning

Back 9

When learned behavior generalizes on the basis of an abstract feature, the phenomenon is known as semantic generalization. Ex: generalizations based on word meanings. Razran: people salivated more when the word had a similar meaning than when the word sounded similar to the training word.

Front 10

Provide an original example of racial or nationality-based prejudice that is due to semantic generalization. Make sure that the generalization is based on a semantic dimension.

Back 10

After 9-11 many people became quite racist towards people of Arab descent.

Front 11

Can generalization of the effects of extinction and punishment occur? Explain. Provide and recognize original examples of excitatory and inhibitory stimulus generalization. Describe Honig and Slivka's (1964) study of inhibitory stimulus generalization

Back 11

Honig and Slivka trained pigeons to peck disks of various colors. A shock was paired with one color. The tendency to peck the disk when it was that color declined but so did the tendency to peck when the disk was other colors.

Front 12

What is discrimination? Provide and recognize original examples of discrimination. Explain how discrimination and generalization are inversely related

Back 12

Discrimination is the tendency for learned behavior to occur in one situation, such as the presence of a red light, but not in other situations, such as the presence of a blue or green light. The organism behaves differently in different situations. Discrimination and generalization are inversely related: the more discrimination, the less generalization

Front 13

What is discrimination training? Provide and recognize original examples of both Pavlovian and operant discrimination training

Back 13

Any procedure for establishing a discrimination is called discrimination training. Ex: put food into the dog’s mouth each time a buzzer sounds and give the dog nothing when a bell rings.

Front 14

What are discriminative stimuli? What symbols are used to designate different types of discriminative stimuli?

Back 14

Discriminative stimuli are stimuli that are associated with different consequences for behavior. S+ or SD indicates that a behavior will have reinforcing consequences. S- or SΔ indicates that the behavior will not have reinforcing consequences. Discrimination occurs when one consequence is more reinforcing than another.

Front 15

Define successive and simultaneous forms of stimulus discrimination training. Provide and recognize original examples of each type.

Back 15

Successive discrimination training, the S+ and S- alternate, usually randomly. Ex: rats may be placed in a chamber with a green and red light. When the red light is on, pressing the lever has no result. When the green light is on, pressing the lever provides food.
Simultaneous Discrimination training, the S+ and S- are presented at the same time. The rat in a chamber with both a red and green light above separate levers.

Front 16

What is a matching to sample procedure? Provide and recognize original examples of matching to sample.

Back 16

In Matching to sample (MTS) procedure, the task is to select from two or more alternatives (called comparison stimuli), the stimulus that matches a standard (the sample).The comparison stimuli include the S+ - the stimulus that matches the sample- and one or more S-s. Ex: A pigeon must peck the color disk that previously shown (match

Front 17

What is an oddity matching procedure? Provide and recognize original examples of oddity matching

Back 17

In oddity matching procedure, the goal is to choose the stimulus that doesn’t match or is different from the sample. Also called mismatching.

Front 18

What is errorless discrimination training? Provide and recognize original examples of such training.

Back 18

Terrace found that many of the errors that occur in discrimination training could be avoided through a process called errorless discrimination training. He presented the S+ and reinforced appropriate behavior; but instead of presenting the S- in the usual manner, he presented it in very weak form and for very short periods.

Front 19

What is the differential outcomes effect (DOE)? Provide and recognize original examples of this effect.

Back 19

Differential outcomes effect: The finding that discrimination training proceeds more rapidly when different behaviors produce different reinforcers.

Front 20

Define stimulus control. Provide and recognize original examples of stimulus control

Back 20

When discrimination training brings behavior under the influence of discriminative stimuli, the behavior is said to be under stimulus control. A rat that only presses the lever when the light is on, but ignores the lever when the light is off. You go into a store that says open, but walk past a store that says closed. We behave differently at a formal ball than we do at a square dance.

Front 21

Describe the following theories of stimulus discrimination/generalization: (a) Pavlov's theory

Back 21

(a) Pavlov’s theory: is physiological. He speculated that discrimination training produces physiological changes in the brain (an area of excitation with the CS+, and an area of inhibition with the CS-). Stimuli similar to the CS+ or CS- will excite or inhibit the same areas.

Front 22

Describe the following theories of stimulus discrimination/generalization:(b) Spence's Theory

Back 22

(b) Spence's Theory Proposed that the tendency to respond to any given stimulus was the result of the interaction of the increased and decreased tendencies to respond, as reflected in gradients of excitation and inhibition. Excitatory and inhibitory gradient (p. 327). The tendency to respond to a novel stimulus will be reduced by the tendency not to respond to that stimulus. Peak shift: The tendency following discrimination training for the peak of responding in a generalization gradient to shift away from the CS- or S-.

Front 23

Describe the following theories of stimulus discrimination/generalization: (c) The Lashley-Wade Theory

Back 23

(c) The Lashley-Wade Theory: Argue that generalization gradients depend on prior experience with stimuli similar to those used in testing. Ex: The more experience a pigeon has had with colors, especially those resembling the S+, the steeper its generalization gradient will be; the less experience the bird has had, the flatter the gradient will be. The theory maintains that generalization occurs because the organism has had too little experience with the stimuli involved to be able to discriminate among them.

Front 24

What is a concept? What does it mean to understand a concept

Back 24

The word concept usually refers to any class the members of which share one or more defining features. Understanding a concept means discriminating between stimuli that fall within the concept class and those that fall outside the concept class.

Front 25

What is transposition? Be able to provide original examples of transposition.

Back 25

Transposition is the ability to transfer a learning to a new situation. Kohler trained chickens to select the lighter of two gray squares. When tested with the light grey square that usually brought food and a new lighter grey square, the chickens chose the new lighter square.

Front 26

Describe a typical mental rotation experiment. How can mental rotation be interpreted as generalization? Describe how Phelps and Reit (1996) flattened the mental rotation “generalization gradient.”

Back 26

In a typical experiment, people were shown letters that had been rotated by varying degrees from their normal, upright position and were asked whether the letters were backward or not. The greater the rotation, the longer it took people to answer. When results are plotted graphically, the resulting curve looks remarkably like a generalization gradient. Participants respond most quickly to the “training stimulus”
Phelps and Reit used a computer program to train students to discriminate between geometric shapes that did and did not match a sample. The items were rotated from the sample position by 0, 60, 120, 180, 240, or 300 degrees. Reaction times were similar to that of a generalization gradient. Results show that “mental rotation” data are generalization data.

Front 27

Describe smoking and quitting smoking in terms of stimulus control relationships. How can you use stimulus control principles to make it more likely that someone will quit smoking successfully?

Back 27

Smoking is reinforced 730,000 times in a moderate smoker who has used cigarettes for 10 years. If each reinforcement increases the resistance of a behavior to change, then it is not surprising that people find it difficult to quit smoking. There are two basic approaches to preventing relapse. The former smoker can avoid situations in which he or she often smoked in the past, or the smoker can undergo training to reduce the control these situations have over his behavior.

Front 28

Describe the experimental neurosis in dogs that was initially discovered in Pavlov's laboratory. Why did Pavlov label it as a neurosis? How is experimental neurosis similar to human instances of nervous breakdowns? Explain.

Back 28

When the dogs could no longer discriminate between an oval and a circle they experience a strange behavior called “experimental neurosis”. Pavlov chose this name because it resembled a “nervous breakdown”. Teenagers, for example, sometimes are praised for taking responsibility and other times criticized for not knowing their place. The discriminations expected are often very subtle, and often the results are similar.