Describe what occurs in generalization, discrimination, extinction, and spontaneous recovery in a case where a dog is classically conditioned to a tone

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Generalization is the tendency for a stimulus that is similar to the original conditioned stimulus to elicit a response that is similar to the conditioned response. Usually, the more similar the new stimulus is to the original conditioned stimulus, the greater will be the conditioned response. In this example, generalization would be shown if the dog salivated to tone of a different pitch.

Discrimination occurs during classical conditioning when an organism learns to make a particular response to some stimuli but not to others. In this case, a dog could be conditioned to salivate to tones of one pitch but not salivate to tones of another pitch by reinforcing only the first tone but not the second.

Extinction refers to a procedure in which a conditioned stimulus is repeatedly presented without the unconditioned stimulus and, as a result, the conditioned stimulus tends to no longer elicit the conditioned response. In this case, extinction could be achieved by repeatedly presenting the tone without providing food.

Spontaneous recovery is the tendency for the conditioned response to reappear after being extinguished even though there have been no further conditioning trials. In this case, the dog might resume salivating to the extinguished tone without further conditioning.