Spontaneous Recovery
Suppose that by the end of the second class, Adam has
completely stopped cringing when Professor Smith pulls out the
revolver. His conditioned response has been extinguished. However, if
Professor Smith comes into class later in the semester and pulls out
the revolver again, Adam may still cringe, though maybe a
little less than before. This is called spontaneous
recovery. Spontaneous recovery is the reappearance of an
extinguished conditioned response when the conditioned stimulus returns
after a period of absence.
Stimulus Generalization
Now suppose Professor Smith conditions Adam again to respond to the
revolver as she did in the first class. Soon he cringes every time she
pulls out the revolver. While Adam is in this conditioned state, the
professor pulls out a cell phone. Adam is likely to cringe at that too
because of stimulus generalization—the tendency to
respond to a new stimulus as if it were the original conditioned stimulus.
Stimulus generalization happens most often when the new stimulus resembles the
original conditioned stimulus.
Example: In the 1920s, the behaviorist John Watson and his colleague Rosalie Rayner did a famous study that
demonstrated stimulus generalization. They gave a white rat to
an eleven-month-old boy named Little Albert, who liked the rat
and enjoyed playing with it. In the next stage of the
experiment, the researchers repeatedly made a loud noise behind
Albert while offering him the rat. Each time, Albert fell to the
floor, frightened. When the researchers then offered the rat to
him without making the noise, Albert showed fear of the rat and
crawled away from it. The researchers were subsequently able to
generalize Albert’s fear to other furry, white stimuli,
including a rabbit, a dog, a fur coat, a Santa Claus mask, and
Watson’s hair. This experiment is considered highly unethical by
today’s standards.
Stimulus Discrimination
Suppose Professor Smith used a gray revolver to
condition Adam. Once Adam is conditioned, if she pulls out a brown
revolver, he’ll initially cringe at that, too. But suppose Professor
Smith never shoots when she pulls out the brown revolver and always
shoots when she pulls out the gray one. Soon, Adam will cringe only at the gray revolver. He is showing stimulus discrimination—the tendency to lack a
conditioned response to a new stimulus that resembles the original
conditioned stimulus.
Higher-Order Conditioning
Now suppose that after Adam has been conditioned to cringe at the sight of
the revolver, Professor Smith comes to class one day and pulls out the revolver
while yelling, “Fire!” She does this many times. Each time, Adam cringes because
he is conditioned to respond to the revolver. If she then yells, “Fire!” without
pulling out the revolver, Adam will still cringe due to higher-order
conditioning—the process by which a neutral stimulus comes to act as
a conditioned stimulus by being paired with another stimulus that already evokes
a conditioned response.
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