Chapter 9- Generalization, Discrimination, And Stimulus Control Flashcards
What is discrimination? Why is discrimination a valuable ability?
The tendency to behave differently in different situations
Valuable because learning would be a handicap if what was learned carried over to situations where it was inappropriate. Sometimes it is best if behaviour learned in one situation does not carry over to very different situations
The tendency for a learned behaviour to occur in the presence of stimuli that were not present during training
Generalization
Provide and recognize examples of generalization as it occurs in Pavlovian conditioning and operant conditioning
Pavlovian conditioning: a dog may learn to salivate to the sound of a tuning fork vibrating at 1000 cps. After this training, the dog may then be found to salivate to the sound of a tuning fork vibrating at, say, 950 cps to 1100 cps, even though it was never exposed to these stimuli
Operant conditioning: Thorndike observed that a cat that has learned to escape from one box by clawing and is then put into another box has a greater tendency to claw at things then it instinctively had at the start
How did Watson and Rayner demonstrate generalization of Pavlovian conditioning in their work with little Albert?
After little Albert learned to fear a white rat, he became fearful of other previously neutral stimuli. Specifically, other white, for he objects that were similar to the white rat
How can generalization be increased?
By providing training in a wide variety of settings
Describe the results of Eisenberger and his colleagues in inducing the generalization of desirable behavioural tendencies.
Found that rewarding a high level of effort on one task increases the level of effort on other tasks, a phenomenon they called learned industriousness. This means that trying hard may, if reinforced in one situation, generalize to another
When rewarding a high level of effort on one task increases the level of effort on other tasks
Learned industriousness
Example: a person who is praised for working really hard at moving firewood, will work equally as hard at cutting it later
Provide and recognize original examples of cases in which generalization is not helpful. Describe Dweck and Repucci’s study illustrating this aspect of generalization
Sometimes a behaviour that is useful in one situation generalizes to situations in which it is not appropriate.
Example: Thorndike noticed that a cat that had learned to escape from a box by pulling on a loop would later pull at the same spot, even though the loop had been removed.
A college student who is off-colour jokes get big laughs in the dormitory me later find that the same jokes are not appreciated at the family dinner table
Dweck Repucci: teachers first gave students unsolvable problems. Later these teachers gave the students problems that could be solved, but the students failed to solve them. Perhaps the tendency to give up generalize from the first situation to the second, because when a different teacher gave the students a solvable problems, they were successful
Can also make a problem behaviours more troublesome then they would if they did not generalize: if punching a large inflated doll is reinforced, children later tend to be more aggressive when interacting with their peers
Any graphic representation of generalization data. When generalization results are plotted on a curve, they yield a figure called the:
Generalization gradient
Describe Gottman’s and Kallush’s study of stimulus generalization in pigeons
Birds learned to pack a disc of a particular colour and later had the opportunity to pack discs of various colors, including the colour used in training. Pigeons packed the disc most frequently when it was the colour used during training, but they also packed the disc when it was other colours. The more closely the disc resembled the training desk, the more often the birds pecked it. If a disk or almost the same colour as the training desk, the birds pecked it at almost as much as if it were the training desk and if it were a very different color, they seldom touched it
Generalization based on an abstract, as opposed to a physical, property of a stimulus
Semantic generalization
Describe Razran’s study of the semantic generalization of Pavlovian conditioning
Had people learn to salivate at the sight of words and then showed them words that were either homophones, words with similar sounds but different meanings, or synonyms of the words in training. The participants salivated in response to the homophones, however, they salivated even more in response to the synonyms. Although there was some generalization based on the sounds of words, there was even more generalization based on word meanings
Provide an original example of racial or nationality-based prejudice that is due to semantic generalization.
Textbook example: during World War II, the word Japanese was often paired with unpleasant words which probably elicited negative emotional reactions in other people. Thousands of Japanese people were imprisoned in concentration camps and their property confiscated, although they’re only crime was that they resembled the enemy
Original example: just recently, Syrian refugees were targeted as well as other people of Arab descent already living in the country because of the terrorist attacks around the world
Can generalization of the effects of extinction and punishment occur?
Yes, behaviour produced by extinction and punishment also spread beyond the training situation
Example: when pressing a horizontal levers for food was put on extinction with rats, this reduced the rats tendency to press a new vertical lever
Describe Koenig and Slivko’s study of inhibitory stimulus generalization
Trained pigeons to peck discs of various colours then began providing brief electrical shock on some occasions reinforcing certain colours but punishing a particular color. The tendency to peck the disc when it was that colour declined, but so did the tendency to pack when the disc was other colors, especially those that were similar to the punished colour
A process in which a response reinforced in one stimulus situation becomes apt to occur in a different, though similar, stimulus situation
Excitatory stimulus generalization
A process in which a response extinguished in one stimulus situation becomes less apt to occur in a different, though similar, stimulus situation
Inhibitory stimulus generalization
The tendency for a behaviour to occur in the presence of certain stimuli, but not in their absence
Discrimination
Example: the tendency to respond in 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
How are discrimination and generalization inversely related?
The more discrimination, the less generalization. Generalization gradients therefore also reflect the degree of discrimination. A relatively flat gradient indicates little or no discrimination; a steep gradient indicates considerable discrimination
Any procedure for establishing A discrimination
Discrimination training
In this type of discrimination training, training consists of presenting one stimulus, the CS+, with the US and presenting another stimulus, the CS-, without the US
Pavlovian discrimination training
Sample: we might put food into a dogs mouth each time a buzzer sounds and give the dog nothing when a bell rings. The dog will salivate at the sound of the buzzer, the CS+, but not at the sound of the bell, the CS-. The dog discriminate between the buzzer and the bell
In this type of discrimination training, training normally consists of reinforcing a behaviour when it occurs in the presence of one stimulus, the S+ or Sd, but not when it occurs in the presence of another stimulus, the S- or Sdelta,
Operant discrimination training
Example: arrange an experimental chamber so that a rat receives food each time it presses a lever, but only if the lamp is on. The result will be that when the lamp is on, S+, The rat presses the lever, and when the lab is off, S-, it does not press. The rat discriminates between the light on situation and the light off situation
In operant discrimination training, any stimulus that signals either that a behaviour will be reinforced (S+ or Sd) or will not be reinforced (S- or Sdelta)
Discriminative stimuli
Stimuli that are associated with different consequences for behaviour
A discrimination training procedure in which the S+ and S- are presented one after the other in random sequence
The S+ and S- alternate, usually randomly. When the S+ appears, the behaviour is reinforced; when the S- appears, the behaviour is on extinction
Successive discrimination training
Example: A rat may be placed in an experimental chamber with two lightbulbs, one red and one green, over a lever. Whenever the red light is on, lever pressing produces food; whenever the green light is on, lever pressing has no effect
A discrimination training procedure in which the S+ and S- are presented at the same time
Simultaneous discrimination training
Example: placing a rat in a chamber in which the red and green lights are on, with each light placed above its own lever. Pressing the lever under the red light results in food; pressing the lever under the green light does not
A discrimination training procedure in which the task is to select from two or more comparison stimuli the one that matches a sample
The comparison stimuli include the S+ – The stimulus that matches the sample — and one or more S-s.
Matching to sample
Example: a sample disk on one wall of an experimental chamber may be illuminated by either a red or a green light. On some trials the disc will be red and others will be green. After a short time the sample desk goes dark, and two comparison discs, one red and one green, are illuminated. The S+ is the disc of the same colour as the sample. If a pigeon pecks the comparison disc that matches the sample, it receives food; if it text the other disk, it receives nothing. To obtain reinforcement, the bird must successfully discriminate between the disk that matches the sample and the one that does not
A variation of matching to sample in which reinforcement is available for selecting the comparison stimulus that is different from the sample
Mismatching or oddity matching
Example: a bird is required to peck a disk that is different from the sample
A form of discrimination training in which the S- is introduced in very weak form and gradually strengthened. The usual result is that discrimination is achieved with few or no errors
Errorless discrimination training
Example: in training a pigeon to discriminate between a red disk (S+) and a green disk (S-), Terrace presented the red desk at full strength for three minutes at a time and instead of presenting a green disc for three minutes, he presented an unlit disk for 5 seconds. Pigeons are less likely to pack a dark disc then a bright one, and the shorter the time the disc is available, the less likely they are to pick it. The result was that the S- was seldom pecked. Gradually he increased the duration and strength of the S- while reinforcing pecking at the S+. Finally he was able to present the green disk without the bird pecking it
The finding that discrimination training proceeds more rapidly when different behaviours produce different reinforcers
Differential outcomes effect
Example: pressing one lever after hearing a tone produces one food pellet, and pressing another lever after hearing a clicker produces five pellets.
The tendency for a behaviour to occur in the presence of an S+ but not in the presence of an S-
When discrimination training brings behaviour under the influence of discriminative stimuli
Stimulus control
Stopping at an intersection when the light is red and driving when the light is green
Describe Pavlov’s theory of stimulus discrimination/generalization
It is physiological. He speculated that discrimination training produces physiological changes in the brain. It establishes an area of excitation associated with the CS+, and an area of inhibition associated with the CS-. If a novel stimulus is similar to the CS+, it will excite an area of the brain near the CS+ area. The excitation will irradiate to the CS+ area and elicit the CR. The same thing happens with the CS- with novel stimuli
Describe Spences theory of stimulus discrimination/generalization
Put aside Pavlov’s physiology but kept the notions of excitation and in inhibition.
Pairing a CS+ with a US results in an increased tendency to respond to the CS+ And to stimuli resembling the CS+. Similarly, reinforcement for responding in the presence of an S plus results in an increased tendency to respond not only to the S plus but to similar stimuli
The generalization gradient that results is called an excitatory gradient
Presenting ACS minus without the US result in a decrease to tendency to respond to the CS minus and to stimulate resembling the CS. And withholding reinforcement when responses occur in the presence of an S minus result in a decrease tendency to respond to that stimulus and two similar stimuli
The generalization gradient that results is called an inhibitory gradient
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
The tendency following discrimination training for the peak of responding in a generalization gradient to shift away from the CS- or S-
Peak shift
Describe the Lashley-Wade theory of stimulus discrimination/generalization
Argued that generalization gradients depend on prior experience with stimuli similar to those used in testing. Discrimination training increases the steepness of the generalization gradient because it teaches the animal to tell the difference between the S+ and other stimuli. Animals and humans undergo a kind of discrimination training in the course of their everyday lives. If an animal is prevented from having any experience with a certain kind of stimulus, such as color, it’s behaviour following training will be affected. If such a color-naïve animal is trained to respond in the presence of a red disk, for example, it will lead to respond just as frequently to a green desk. In other words, it’s gradient of generalization it will be flat
Any class or group or category, the members of which share one or more defining features
Concept
The defining features allow us to discriminate the members of one class from the members of another class
What does it mean to understand a concept?
Understanding a concept means discriminating between stimuli that fall within the concept class and those that fall outside the concept class.
Kohler trained chickens to select the lighter of two gray squares, after training, he tested them with a light gray square that had always lead to food and with a still lighter gray square they had never seen before. Instead of choosing the original gray square that had previously lead to food, the birds chose the new lighter Square. This phenomenon was called
Transposition, since it seemed analogous to musical transposition, in which a composition is played in a key different from the original
Describe a typical mental rotation experiment
People were showing letters that had been rotated by varying degrees from their normal, upright position and were asked whether the letters were backward, that is, mirror images of the original, or not. The greater the rotation, the longer it took people to answer. May mean that from such data, people mentally rotate an internal representation or image of the letter until it is in its normal, upright position, and then decide whether it is backward
How can mental rotation be interpreted as generalization?
When rotating images, plotting the time it takes to react to rotated figures results in a curve that looks like a generalization gradient. Participants respond most quickly to the trainings to be less, the letter they were trained in school to recognize; the less the stimulus resembles the training stimulus, the slower is the response
Describe how Phelps and Reit flattened the mental rotation generalization gradient
With continued training of college students to discriminate between geometric shapes that did and do not match the sample, the generalization gradients flattened. This is probably because students continued to receive feedback during testing and therefore improved their reaction times to rotated items.
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?
If each reinforcement increases the resistance of a behaviour to change, then it is hardly surprising that people find it difficult to quit smoking. Drug-associated stimuli include environmental events, because they have been paired with tobacco use in the past, have acquired some degree of stimulus control over tobacco use. Because the use of tobacco and the reinforcing effects of nicotine have frequently occur together in the situations, they have become discriminative stimuli for lighting a cigarette. And since smokers typically smoke throughout the day, many different situations become discriminative stimuli for smoking
Two basic approaches to preventing relapse: this former smoker can avoid situations in which he or she often smoked in the past, thereby avoiding the ability of the situations to elicit smoking, or the smoker can undergo training to reduce to control the situations have over their behavior. This may be done, for example, by gradually exposing the smoker to those situations while preventing him or her from smoking
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?
A dog was trained to salivate at the site of a circle flashed on the screen, and not to salivate at the site of an oval. When the researcher modify the oval so that it more closely resembled the circle until the two forms were nearly identical, progress with the dog stopped. Not only did the animal fail to discriminate between the two forms, but it began to squeal and Wriggle and tore off the apparatus for mechanical stimulation of the skin, and been through the tubes connecting the animals room with the observer
Pavlov called the dogs bizarre behaviour and experimental neurosis because it seemed to him that the behaviour resembled that sometimes seen in people who had had “nervous breakdowns”
Sometimes humans find themselves in situations that require settled discriminations, and such situations do seem to be stressful. For example, when teenagers are praised by their parents for accepting responsibility, and another locations they are criticized for not knowing their place.
Any bizarre or neurotic-like behaviour induced through an experimental procedures such as discrimination training
Experimental neurosis
What is generalization? Why is generalization such an important topic?
Generalization is when what we learn in one situation carries over to new situations. This tendency for a learned behaviour to spread to new situations not involved in training is called generalization
It is important because we rarely, if ever, find ourselves in precisely the same situation twice, so it is important that what we learn in one situation carries over to new situations
Occurs when a class of stimuli that share stimulus features act as discriminative stimuli for responding
Conceptual behaviour
A child who can correctly identify the concept of inside. Correctly identifies marbles is being inside bottles, cats as being inside houses, and planes as being inside hangers. The stimulus feature of insideness would be a discriminative stimulus for the child’s behavior. This child can identify insideness even when it occurs in diverse and novel situations
The members of the stimulus class
Concept instances or examples
Concept instances of the concept Limerick is composed of all the instances of limerick poems
The relevant, defining, or distinctive features of the concept
Critical features
The critical features of a limerick has to do with the rhymes and number of words
Features of the stimuli in the class that do not define the concept and vary from one stimulus instance to the next
Variable features
The humour of the limerick and the words and rhymes used
Explain why learning to respond to stimulus features, rather than individual stimuli, is valuable
Responding to stimulus features allow us to generalize what we’ve learned two new stimulus-class members we encounter. Without this, each new stimulus we encounter would require complete relearning
Explain how concept learning involves both discrimination and generalization
Concept learning involves discrimination because an individual must label members of the concept class as such, and not label other stimulus classes of the concept that are not instances of the concept
Involves generalization because an individual who has learned the concept will respond to all members of the stimulus class in the same way
When presented with new concept examples, the individual fails to identify them appropriately
The learner fails to identify correctly all members of a conceptual-stimulus class as concept instances
Undergeneralization
When the learner incorrectly identifies concept non-instances outside the conceptual-stimulus class as concept instances
Overgeneralization
What is necessary to test for conceptual behavior?
It is necessary to show that the critical features of the concept are discriminative stimuli for the learners response. To do this, it is necessary to use novel test items, ones the learner has not encountered before
Describe the relation between concepts and words. Describe the benefits of using words to refer to concepts
Many concepts have labels, words that refer to the critical feature of the stimulus class.
And if it’s: allows us to talk, read, and right about huge glasses of stimuli that are too numerous to encounter directly. Through the use of words, we can discuss abstract relations. Words that referred to concept features free hour thinking from the constraints of a specific stimuli by allowing us to refer to stimulus features in isolation and in relation to other stimulus features.
Describe the common factors between conceptual discrimination and stimulus discrimination that make them each effective
Conceptual discrimination is a type of stimulus discrimination, so the principles that make stimulus discrimination effective generally apply to conceptual discrimination as well. Factors such as active responding, pre-training procedures, the similarity of the stimuli, the relationship between the training and goal stimuli, the similarity of required responses, The rate of stimulus presentation, and the order of stimulus presentation I’ll contribute to the effectiveness of conceptual discrimination
How does defining the goal of conceptual discrimination through concept analysis contribute to the effectiveness of conceptual discrimination?
Having a goal allows us to plan instruction of the concept. The goals of concept teaching must be defined before we can go further.
Through concept analysis, a concept is broken down into its critical and variable features which allows a teacher to construct concept examples and non-examples for teaching purposes.
Add additional benefit of concept analysis is it’s effect on teachers, by demanding that teachers identify the components of the concepts their students are learning and provides them with a fresh and precise understanding of concepts they may have taught before, but not thoroughly analyzed
How does using concept definitions contribute to the effectiveness of conceptual discrimination?
A concept definition is a rule that specifies the features of a concept that make it a member of the conceptual stimulus class. A student who learns this definition is able to apply it to discriminate between examples and non-examples.
Effective because students have previously learned the words in the concept definition, and these words then can serve as discriminative stimuli for identifying concept examples and non-examples. They take advantage of the students previous learning of the words in the rule
How does training discrimination skills with examples and non-examples contribute to the effectiveness of conceptual discrimination?
Teaching concepts through definitions alone does not give the students the opportunity to discover the range and richness of variation in the examples that make up the conceptual stimulus class. Important aspects of examples and non-examples include use of focal examples, use of a broad range of examples that include many different variables features, and use of non-examples that lack a single critical feature to teach the learners the boundaries of the conceptual stimulus class
When Variable features of the concept are responded to as critical features
Errors of misconception
Mistaking the types of food eaten by people with boulimia nervosa as being a critical feature of the concept
When a learner is trained to engage in a response that has a set of specified features, and this training allows the learner to engage in new responses that have those features, we say that the learner has required a:
Generalized response class
Also called operations, and the training that produces a generalized response class is sometimes called operations training. The word operant is also often used to refer to a generalized response class
Example: generalized imitation where in learners imitations of specific model behaviours are prompted and reinforced, which enables the learner to show generalized imitation, to imitate any new modelled response.
Explain why generalized imitation and Goetz and Baer’s work in training creative responding illustrate generalized response classes
Trained preschool children to perform novel forms a block building by reinforcing the building of new forms. This training cost of the children to build a new forms at a higher rate. This is an example of a generalized response class because the train response had a specified feature: it had to be different from what the child had done before; and the training resulted in the children being able to perform new responses that had the specified property, novelty
Compare and contrast conceptual behaviour with generalized response classes
Similar: both are defined in terms of features. In conceptual behavior, stimulus features rather than specific stimuli act as discriminative stimuli for a response. In a generalized response class, the learners able to engage in a variety of responses that have certain response features in common rather than one specific trained response. In both, the stimulus and response class members differ from each other in certain respects. In conceptual behavior, different conceptual class members different because they have different variable features. Likewise, in a generalized response class, responses can differ from each other, as long as they contain the critical response features that define the generalized response class. The tests for conceptual behaviour and generalized response classes are similar because they both require that the Leonard do something new. To show conceptual behavior, the learner must respond correctly to new stimuli that have the critical concepts features. To show a generalized response class, the learner must engage a new behaviours that have the critical features of the response class.
Provide and recognize original examples in which conceptual behaviour and generalized response classes are learned in the same task
Example: solving a mathematics story problem requires that the learner make conceptual discriminations based on features of the problem, and engage in a generalized response class. They may have to set up an equation and perform mathematical operations
A teaching method that is explicitly designed to teach both conceptual and generalized response classes at the same time. The basic strategy is to give the learner a range of teaching tasks in which the same basic stimulus and response features are present, but the specific stimuli and responses in each task vary.
General-case instruction or general case training
Describe how defining the goal tasks influences the learning of conceptual behaviour and generalized response glasses
The first step is to define the target skills the learner is to acquire
Describe how analyzing the critical stimulus and response features influences the learning of conceptual behaviour and generalized response classes
It is important to identify the critical and variable features of a concept in order to derive concept illustrations for teaching and testing purposes. A generalized response class will have critical response features that define response class membership and also variable features that will differ from member to member.
Identifying common stimulus and response features that are present in tasks, and making this the basis for instruction
Sameness analysis.
By analyzing critical stimulus and response features, tasks can be divided into classes, and instruction can focus on teaching the same miss, the central stimulus and response features that make different tasks alike.
Describe how providing rules that identify the critical stimulus and response features influences the learning of conceptual behaviour and generalized response glasses
Rules that inform the learner of what critical response features are required in a task will help the learner be able to acquire the generalized response class.
Rules are generally helpful in teaching learners about stimulus and response features because words and rules can identify critical stimulus and response features. Rules are useful in acquiring generalized response classes because they make use of words the learner has previously acquired
Describe how using a variety of tasks influences the learning of conceptual behaviour and generalized response classes
It is important that the learner received training in a variety of tasks that sampled the stimulus and response variation that exists in the stimulus and response classes to be learned
Describe how testing for stimulus and response class formation by requiring performance on novel tasks influences the learning of conceptual behaviour and generalized response classes
It is important to test the learner on tasks that require both responding to novel stimuli and novel responses. Only in this way can we determine if a class of stimuli and responses have been learned rather than specific responses to specific stimuli
