Question

A family uses the microwave to prepare their cat's food. The cat comes running into the room when the microwave timer sounds, but not when it hears the oven timer. The cat is demonstrating the concept of
a. generalization.
b. discrimination.
c. spontaneous recovery.
d. extinction.
e. habituation.

Answer 1

Answer:b. discrimination

Explanation:

Discrimination, in psychology, refers to being able to differentiate between different stimuli. It is more upgraded learning than generalization which is only focused on perceiving similarities. Animals can be trained to do both discrimination and generalization. In this case this dog has learnt to discriminate the sound made by the oven and the sound made by the microwave and this is due to association of microwave with it food. A microwave has become a conditioned stimulus since it is associated with unconditioned stimulus which is the dog's food. Through this process the dog has learnt to actual know particularly how the microwave sounds as compared to the oven.