The nature of stimulus and response generalization is discussed, and a number of tasks related to generalization that are commonly taught in early childhood programs are identified. Research evidence concerning generalization is reported, as are recommendations for enhancing generalization. (Author/LB)

The personality characteristics which were found to be related to stimulus seeking seem to follow from the basic premise that the stimulus seeker has a stronger than average need to seek out and approach situations, activities, and ideas which are novel, changing, complex, surprising, or more intense. (Author)

Rabbits were given reinforced training of the nictitating membrane (NM) response using separate conditioned stimuli (CSs), which were a tone, light, and/or tactile vibration. Then, two CSs were compounded and given further pairings with the unconditioned stimulus (US). Evidence of both overexpectation and summation effects appeared. That is,…

One of a series of original statements on a central concept, principle, theory, or problem in the social sciences, this module presents a definition and some illustrations of paired associate (PA) learning and a summary of the procedures used in PA learning. Many of the important research findings on PA learning are briefly recounted and a basic…

Stimulus preference assessments for individuals with developmental disabilities typically involve offering choices among stimuli and providing immediate access to the chosen stimuli. Several researchers have explored the utility of presenting choices verbally, thereby obviating the need to present the choices in tangible form and deliver access to…

The purpose of the document is to assess facilitating and interfering effects of various strategies in samples of children from elementary and high school grade levels. Participating in the paired-associate study were 160 children, 40 each from first, third, sixth, and eleventh grades. Subjects were required to learn a 36-item aurally presented…

Reports on three experiments that do the following: 1) investigate the motivational and reinforcing structure underlying male sex role action in a three-person (a female and two males) exchange; and 2) contribute new information on females' interpersonal evaluation of males expressing masculine sex typed and androgynous sex role orientation. (MW)

Michael (1975) reviewed efforts to classify reinforcing events in terms of whether stimuli are added (positive reinforcement) or removed (negative reinforcement). He concluded that distinctions in these terms are confusing and ambiguous. Of necessity, adding a stimulus requires its previous absence and removing a stimulus its previous presence.…

Two adaptive psychophysical procedures (tracking and "yes-no" staircase) for obtaining human visual contrast sensitivity functions (CSF) were evaluated. The procedures were chosen based on their proven validity and the desire to evaluate the practical effects of stimulus transients, since tracking procedures traditionally employ gradual…

Trained preschoolers and adults on three sets of successive discriminations with stimuli labeled A, B, and R. Tested for derived stimulus-response relations and stimulus-stimulus relations. Adults displayed class-consistent B-R and A-B performances over all conditions. Children's display of class-consistent B-R performance varied by training…

Infants in four age groups--three, six, nine and twelve months--were exposed to an experimental procedure designed to assess the extent to which such subjects were capable of discriminating between different orientations of the same form, and the extent to which they were capable of recognizing the identity between different orientations of the…

Describes a computer tutorial that teaches the fundamentals of stimulus generalization in operant learning. Concepts covered include reinforcement, discrimination learning, stimulus continua, generalization, generalization gradients, and peak shift. The tutorial also reviews applications in human and animal situations. The content is appropriate…