Final answer:
Shaping is the technique used to train organisms to perform complex behaviors by rewarding successive approximations toward a target behavior, and involves stimulus discrimination to differentiate between similar stimuli.
Step-by-step explanation:
The technique when organisms are gradually trained to execute complicated sequences of discrete responses is called shaping. Shaping involves rewarding successive approximations toward a target behavior. This method is crucial in both classical and operant conditioning, allowing the organism to achieve complex behaviors through gradual steps. For example, shaping is often witnessed in animal training routines, where a behavior is broken down into smaller, more manageable actions, and each step is reinforced accordingly. An important aspect of shaping behavior is stimulus discrimination, which is the organism's ability to respond differently to various stimuli, only showing the conditioned response to the conditioned stimulus and not to other similar stimuli.
Contrasting with stimulus discrimination is stimulus generalization, where an organism will show the conditioned response to stimuli that resemble the conditioned stimulus. Both of these aspects are essential in the learning process and are also used in shaping complex behavior. This can be seen in behavior experiments like Skinner’s pigeons, which were shaped to perform novel tasks such as playing ping pong.
In summary, shaping is the process of guiding an organism through various stages of learning until it achieves the desired complex behavior. It relies on rewarding each step that approximates the end goal, which is a fundamental approach within the field of behaviorism.