Final answer:
Stimulus generalization occurs when an organism responds to new stimuli that are similar to the conditioned stimulus from original training, such as a dog salivating to sounds similar to the bell it was trained to respond to.
Step-by-step explanation:
The process being described here is known as stimulus generalization. This occurs when behaviors happen in the presence of stimuli that are similar to the discriminative stimulus (SD) that was established during discrimination training. In this case, the organism displays the conditioned response to new stimuli that resemble the conditioned stimulus that it was initially trained to respond to during classical conditioning.
For example, if a dog has been trained to salivate at the sound of a bell (because this sound was always followed by food), it may also start salivating to similar sounds, such as a doorbell or a phone notification, if these sounds are close enough to the original bell sound. Over time, with further training, it can learn to discriminate and respond only to the specific sound associated with food.