Glossary

analyzer	An internal mechanism that detects the presence of the salient aspect of a stimulus.



anticipatory contrast	The long-lasting change in responding due to an anticipated change in the reinforcement contingency.



behavioral contrast	In a two-choice discrimination task, the increase in response to S^D that occurs at the same time as responding to S^Δ declines.



conditional discrimination	A situation in which the availability of reinforcement to a particular stimulus depends upon the presence of a second stimulus.



continuity theory of discrimination learning	The idea that the development of a discrimination is a continuous and gradual acquisition of excitation to S^D and inhibition to S^Δ.



discrimination	responding in different ways to different stimuli



discrimination learning	Responding in different ways to different stimuli.



discriminative operant	An operant behavior that is under the control of a discriminative stimulus.



discriminative stimulus	A stimulus that signals the availability or unavailability of reinforcement.



errorless discrimination learning	A training procedure in which the gradual introduction of S^Δ leads to responding S^Δ without any errors to S^D.



excitatory generalization gradient	A graph showing the level of generalization from an excitatory conditioned stimulus (CS1) to other stimuli.



generalization	Responding in the same manner to similar stimuli.



generalization gradient	A visual representation of the response strength produced by stimuli of varying degrees of similarity to the training stimulus.



Hull-Spence theory of discrimination learning	learning The idea that conditioned excitation first develops to S^D, followed by the conditioning of inhibition to S^Δ.



inhibitory generalization gradient	A graph showing the level of generalization from an inhibitory conditioned stimulus (CS2) to other stimuli.



Lashley-Wade theory of generalization	The idea that generalization occurs when animals are unable to distinguish between the test stimulus and the conditioning stimulus.



local contrast	A change in behavior that occurs following a change in reinforcement contingency. The change in behavior fades with extended training.



noncontinuity theory of discrimination learning	The idea that discrimination is learned rapidly once an animal discovers the relevant dimension and attends to relevant stimuli.



occasion setting	The ability of one stimulus to enhance the response to another stimulus.



peak shift	The shift in the maximum response, which occurs to a stimulus other than S^D and in the stimulus direction opposite that of the S^Δ.



SΔ	A stimulus that indicates the availability of reinforcement contingent upon the occurrence of an appropriate response.



SD	A stimulus that indicates that reinforcement is unavailable and that the operant response will be ineffective.



sustained contrast	The long-lasting change in responding due to the anticipated change in the reinforcement contingency.



Sutherland-Mackintosh attentional theory	The theory that attention to the relevant dimension is strengthened in the first stage, and association of a particular response to the relevant stimulus occurs in the second stage of discrimination learning.



transposition	Kohler's idea that animals learn relationships between stimuli, and that they respond to different stimuli based on the same relationship as the original training stimuli.



two-choice discrimination learning	A task when the S^D and S^Δare on the same stimulus dimension.

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