Question

Two-year-old philip was recently clawed by the neighbor's cat. philip's newly developed tendency to fear all small animals demonstrates the process of ___

a. generalization.
b. shaping.
c. spontaneous recovery.
d. secondary reinforcement.

Answer 1

Philip's fear of all small animals due to a negative experience with a cat exemplifies stimulus generalization, a concept where a response extends to similar stimuli.

Step-by-step explanation:

Philip's newly developed tendency to fear all small animals after being clawed by a cat demonstrates the process of stimulus generalization. This is a concept in psychology where a conditioned response to one stimulus is evoked by other, similar stimuli. For example, in Watson and Rayner's experiments with Little Albert, he was conditioned to fear a white rat and subsequently began to be afraid of other furry white objects, which is a classic instance of stimulus generalization.

In contrast, stimulus discrimination would involve Philip only responding with fear to the specific cat that clawed him. Habituation is a different learning process where an organism becomes less responsive to a repeated stimulus over time. The scarecrow example with crows becoming used to its presence illustrates habituation. The term classical conditioning refers to the learning process by which a neutral stimulus becomes associated with an innately meaningful stimulus and acquires the capacity to elicit a similar response.