generalization, discrimination, and stimulus control

stimulus control of operant behavior

• Behaving differently depending on stimulus conditions (context) present at time

• history of experience w/ diff contingencies of reinforcement/punishment in presence of those stimulus conditions (context)

• context as signal for appropriate behavior

• Learned by differential reinforcement w/ respect to environmental context

3-term contingency

a: b —> c

• Antecedent stimulus signals Behavior → Consequence

  • S^D: B → S^R

discrimination-training procedures

successive, simultaneous

successive

• Only S+ OR S- presented at 1 time

• Random order

simultaneous

• Both s+ & s- presented at same time

matching-to-sample (MTS) procedure

simultaneous procedure

• Select stimulus out of array that “matches” sample stimulus

• Once stimulus control been established w/ single stimulus (/few stimuli), able to respond in presence of novel stimuli - based upon our experiences w/ og stimuli

  • once child has learned to name various animals w/ few examples, we can predict what they will do w/ new stimuli

stimulus generalization

Responding in presence of novel stimulus (context) as function of history of reinforcement in presence of another stimulus (context)

generalization test

• Present novel (i.e., untrained) stimuli, and test how subject responds

• Important we don’t provide reinforcement for responding in presence of novel (test) stimuli. Testing done in extinction.

generalization gradient

Graph, which depicts likelihood of responding to novel stimuli

stimulus classes

groups of stimuli; stimuli within group “function similarly”

• birds, dogs, cars, etc

concept

• Generalization within class of stimuli

• Discrimination between classes of stimuli

  • learned through contingencies of reinforcement