Okay, so like we talked about, conditioned responses can be extended or they can also be refined. And two examples of this are stimulus generalization and stimulus discrimination. So stimulus generalization is pretty much what it sounds like. It's the tendency for stimuli that are similar to the conditioned stimulus to also generate the conditioned response. So, for example, let's just say we have trained an animal to salivate when they hear an A note on the piano.
In this case, our conditioned stimulus is this A note and then our conditioned response is salivation. So, that is an established response. Now with stimulus generalization what's going to happen is that similar stimuli, let's say we play an E note or a C note, are also going to generate the conditioned response. The animal has basically generalized the stimuli that it will respond to. Now, the opposite of that pretty much is stimulus discrimination.
Stimulus discrimination is when the animal has the ability to distinguish between similar but not related stimuli. So assuming, you know, our example here is the same, we have our conditioned stimulus as the A note and that produces our conditioned response of salivation. But with stimulus discrimination, what's going to happen is that similar stimuli, so an E note for example, is going to elicit no response from that animal. They have basically learned to discriminate between those very similar-sounding stimuli. So, they've basically refined their responses.
Now like I mentioned, these are basically opposites, so as stimulus discrimination increases, as the animal gets better at refining that response and discriminating between similar types of stimuli, then stimulus generalization would decrease and vice versa could also potentially happen. Alright, so that is stimulus generalization and discrimination, and I will see you guys in our next one. Bye-bye.