Final answer:
Acquisition is the process of learning a new association in classical conditioning, while extinction is the weakening and disappearance of a conditioned response.
Step-by-step explanation:
Acquisition refers to the process of learning a new association between a conditioned stimulus and an unconditioned stimulus. It occurs when the neutral stimulus begins to elicit the conditioned response. For example, in Pavlov's experiment, the dogs learned to associate the sound of a bell (conditioned stimulus) with the presentation of food (unconditioned stimulus), and they started salivating (conditioned response) when they heard the bell. Extinction, on the other hand, is the weakening and eventual disappearance of a conditioned response when the conditioned stimulus is presented without the unconditioned stimulus. If the bell in Pavlov's experiment was repeatedly presented without food, the dogs would eventually stop salivating in response to the bell. Spontaneous recovery refers to the reappearance of a previously extinguished conditioned response after a rest period. Even after extinction has occurred, a conditioned response may spontaneously reappear when the conditioned stimulus is presented again. This demonstrates that extinction does not erase the original learning. Generalization occurs when an organism responds to similar stimuli in the same way that it responds to a conditioned stimulus. For example, if a dog has been conditioned to salivate in response to a bell, it may also salivate in response to a similar sound, such as a doorbell. Discrimination, on the other hand, occurs when an organism learns to respond differently to similar stimuli. For example, the dog may eventually learn to only salivate in response to the original conditioned stimulus (the bell) and not to other similar sounds.