The Little Albert Experiment
One famous psychology experiment perfectly illustrated how stimulus generalization works.
In the classicLittle Albertexperiment, researchersJohn B. Watsonand Rosalie Rayner conditioned a little boy to fear a white rat.
In this case, you would want to usestimulus discriminationto train your dog to distinguish between different voice commands.
Illustration by Emily Roberts, Verywell
Stimulus generalization can also explain why the fear of a certain object often affects many similar objects.
A person afraid of spiders generally won’t be afraid of just one pop in of spider.
Instead, this fear will apply to all types and sizes of spiders.
The individual might even be afraid of toy spiders and pictures of spiders.
Stimulus Generalization in Classical and Operant Conditioning
Stimulus generalization can occur in bothclassical conditioningandoperant conditioning.
Example
Imagine that parents punish their son for not cleaning his room.
He eventually learns to clean up his messes to avoid punishment.
Stimulus Generalization vs.
Eventually, the dog will respond only to the whistle and not to other tones.
The dogs then learned to salivate (which is theconditioned response) whenever they saw the circle.
Stimulus generalization can have an important impact on the response to a stimulus.
Takeaways
Stimulus generalization can play an important role in the conditioning process.
In other cases, this tendency to generalize between similar stimuli can lead to problems.
Failing to distinguish between two commands might make the learning process more difficult and can lead to incorrect responses.
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2012;15(4):302-327. doi:10.1037/a0026720
Franzoi.Psychology: A Discovery Experience, Copyright Update.
Cengage Learning; 2014.
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Elsevier; 2014:451-481. doi:10.1016/B978-0-12-394427-6.00015-7
Gray JA.The Psychology of Fear and Stress.
United Kingdom, Cambridge University Press, 1987.
2018;115(7):E1690-E1697.
