Final answer:
The dog's behavior of barking at a stranger's car but getting excited by the owner's car is an example of stimulus discrimination, which is the learned ability to differentiate between similar stimuli and react accordingly.
Step-by-step explanation:
The behavior of the dog barking and growling at the sound of a stranger's car, but wagging its tail and getting excited by the sound of its owner's car, illustrates stimulus discrimination. This is a concept where the dog has learned to respond differently to various similar stimuli. In this case, the dog shows a conditioned response to the sound of the owner's car (excitement) but discriminates against the sound of a stranger's car by demonstrating a different behavior (barking and growling).
Similar examples can be observed in classical conditioning experiments, like Pavlov's dogs salivating at the sound of a bell which had been repeatedly paired with the presentation of food. Through the conditioning process, the dogs learned to associate the bell (conditioned stimulus) with food (unconditioned stimulus), leading to salivation (conditioned response) when the bell rang. If a different sound did not predict food, the dogs did not respond with salivation, showing discrimination between the sounds.