What is the difference between discrimination and generalization

Inappropriate stimulus generalization occurs when those different situations fail to produce discriminative operant responding. Generalization is not always inappropriate and occurs when you respond the same to two stimuli that are not identical. For example, a child may learn to say "dog" when it sees the drawing of a rottweiler in a book. If the child later says "dog" when it sees a schnauzer on the street, it has generalized between the two distinct stimuli the rottweiler and the schnauzer.

The dog is a stimulus which triggers a specific reaction. However, you do not have the same reaction to cats. This means that you discriminate in your reactions to the two different animals. In generalization, on the other hand, the organism has the same reaction to different stimuli. To apply this to our previous example, let's say you were too young to understand the differences between cats and dogs at the time you were bitten.

Now you get anxious around any kind of animal, even though it was a dog that bit you and not a cat, or horse, or anything else. In the case described above, discrimination and generalization occur without your knowledge or forethought.

These are unconditioned responses. It is possible to condition the discrimination or generalization response to accomplish certain goals. For example, you can train a dog to perform specific commands jump, sit, lie down, etc. In doing so, you reinforce a specific response to specific stimuli. If the dog is well-trained, he will not jump up when you tell him to sit. He can discriminate among the different types of commands - this an example of classical conditioning.

The dog's response to your commands is a conditioned response. Generalization can also be a conditioned or unconditioned response. When you teach a child a skill such as reading or adding, you want that skill to be carried over into other settings besides the classroom.

The student must be trained to generalize their response so that they can use it in real life effectively. Another type of response to stimuli is habituation. This occurs when the same stimulus occurs so repeatedly or constantly, that it no longer has any effect.

If you hear a siren outside your apartment building, you may jump because the noise startles you. If you heard that same siren all day long, you would no longer notice it, and it would cease to startle you. It's possible to condition the response of release from habituation by changing the stimuli. If the subject is habituated to a certain noise, you can elicit a response by changing the noise a bit.

The first known experiments with discrimination and generalization were performed by the famous Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov in the s. The other never predicts food powder. The positions of the two stimuli are randomized, so the dog cannot tell the stimuli apart only by their color, not by their position. If the dog learns to salivate to one light and not the other, then we know it can tell the difference between them.

And, yes, experiments like this show that dogs can see in color. How can discrimination learning be used to investigate sensory capabilities of an animal? In developmental psychology research, very young babies can provide research data through discrimination learning techniques. In one procedure, a baby sucks on a nonnutritive nipple: a pacifier connected to a computer.

If the baby sucks faster when it sees the mother's face rather than a stranger's, this shows the baby can tell them apart. It can discriminate between them. Such experiments show that babies can detect their mother's faces, voices, and odors.

One very useful research technique is called release from habituation. Habituation is gradual cessation stopping of a response when the same stimulus is repeated many times. Habituation happens reliably it is a robust phenomenon, as scientists say.

Habituation is adaptive for all organisms, because organisms do not waste energy on stimuli that are constantly around but cause no harm. If there is a loud ticking in the room, soon you will not hear it. If you live near traffic, soon you tune it out. If you repeat a tone, soon a baby will ignore it. But if a different sound is played, the baby might perk up, or stop sucking on a non-nutritive nipple.

If that happens, then obviously the baby can tell the difference between the new tone and the earlier tones. This phenomenon, called release from habituation or dishabituation , is proof of an ability to discriminate. It shows an organism reacts differently to two categories of stimuli. The great advantage of dishabituation is that it works in creatures without language. Babies cannot tell you if they discriminate between two forms of music, but release from habituation shows that they can.

The "second visual system" the one passing through the superior colliculi of the brain directs eye movements. It is unconscious. Normally the collicular visual system directs eye movements toward moving stimuli. But if the same stimulus is repeated often enough, the eye movements stop. This is habituation. If the stimulus in peripheral vision changes, the eye movement returns. That shows the collicular system is capable of pattern recognition of a simple variety. Experiments using release from habituation have shown remarkable discrimination abilities in babies.

Distinguish Between. How can you distinguish between generalisation and discrimination? Solution Show Solution The distinguishing features between generalisation and discrimination are as follows: Generalisation refers to the phenomenon of responding similarly to similar stimuli.

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