Question

A family uses the microwave to prepare their cat's food. The cat comes running into the room when the microwave timer sounds, but not when it hears the oven timer. The cat is demonstrating the concept of

a. generalization.
b. discrimination.
c. spontaneous recovery.
d. extinction.
e. habituation.

Answer 1

The cat is demonstrating stimulus discrimination by responding to the microwave timer but not the oven timer, showing it can tell the difference between the sounds that are associated with its food.

Step-by-step explanation:

The cat in the scenario demonstrates stimulus discrimination because it responds to the microwave timer but not to the oven timer, indicating it can distinguish between the two sounds. This is similar to classical conditioning experiments, such as Pavlov's dogs, where animals learn to respond to a specific stimulus associated with a particular outcome (like food) and not to other similar stimuli. Stimulus discrimination is a learning process where an organism learns to respond differently to various stimuli that are similar, showing the conditioned response only to the conditioned stimulus.

Answer 2

Answer:b. discrimination

Step-by-step explanation:

Discrimination, in psychology, refers to being able to differentiate between different stimuli. It is more upgraded learning than generalization which is only focused on perceiving similarities. Animals can be trained to do both discrimination and generalization. In this case this dog has learnt to discriminate the sound made by the oven and the sound made by the microwave and this is due to association of microwave with it food. A microwave has become a conditioned stimulus since it is associated with unconditioned stimulus which is the dog's food. Through this process the dog has learnt to actual know particularly how the microwave sounds as compared to the oven.