Chapter 16 Transferring Behavior to New Setting and Making It Last Generality of Behavioral Change Study Questions 1 Define stimulus generalization and give an example that is not in this chapter Stimulus generalization refers to the procedure of reinforcing a response in the presence of a stimulus or situations and the effect of the response becoming more probably in the presence of another stimulus or situation For example two rabbits that look similar is a stimulus generalization 2 Define or describe unlearned response generalization due to physical similarity of responses and give an example The more physically similar two responses are the more unlearned response generalization will occur between them If you learn a forehand shot in racquetball chances are that you would be able to perform a forehand shot in squash or tennis The responses involved are very similar 3 Define or describe learned response generalization based on minimal physical similarity of responses and give an example Just as there are large classes of stimuli that share a common characteristic although they differ in many other characteristics there are also widely different responses that share a common characteristic Learned response generalization can occur within such response classes For example a child who has learned to add s to the ends of words pertaining to more than one object or event may show response generalization even when it is grammatically incorrect e g saying foots instead of feet while looking at a picture of two feet 4 Describe an example of learned response generalization due to functionally equivalent responses If you are asked to start a fire you might obtain and strike a match flip a cigarette lighter place a stick in an existing fire to start a new fire or perhaps even rub two sticks together 5 When discussing programming of generality of behavior what do we mean by the training situation versus the target situation The target situation is usually but not necessarily the natural environment Because programming for generality is somewhat different for operant and respondent behavior we shall consider each separately Programming for generality of operant behavior change includes strategies of programming for stimulus generalization response generalization and behavior maintenance 6 Briefly describe how the experiment to teach self protection skills to children demonstrated behavioral generality After training was completed each child was tested in a community setting to determine whether the response established during training would be performed in a novel setting All three children responded correctly to the lures in that setting After 12 weeks Stan and Patti were tested again in the community setting Stan continued to respond perfectly whereas Patti made the correct verbal response but stayed in the vicinity of the stranger 7 Briefly list four tactics for programming operant stimulus generalization Give an example of each Train in the target situation For example suppose that a parent wants to teach a child to count out the correct amount of change for purchasing a bag of candy The ideal place to do this would be in a store that sells candy Of course some preliminary training in a more controlled setting might be necessary Vary the training conditions For example in the lead case for this chapter no attempt was made to control background stimuli such as playground and traffic noise as might be done in more basic research Program common stimuli For example Walker and Buckley 1972 described a program in which social and academic classroom behaviors were taught to children in a remedial classroom Stimulus generalization to the regular classroom was ensured by using the same academic materials i e common stimuli in both classrooms Train sufficient stimulus exemplars For example Stan s training occurred in several different places in the schoolyard and with several different lures 8 Which of the strategies for programming operant stimulus generalization capitalizes on stimulus generalization due to physical similarity Justify your choice Program common stimuli because the third tactic is to program common stimuli deliberately by developing the behavior to specific stimuli that are present in both the training and target settings 9 How might the teaching of a rule facilitate operant stimulus generalization State the general factor for programming for generalization that seems to be operating and illustrate with an example Train in the target situation For example whichever situation the rule you are trying to teach belongs in you should train in that situation 10 Describe the example of a self generated mediator of generalization involving the figure skater Martin 2007 described how a young skater used this strategy to transfer skilled skating performance from practices to competitions The young skater was able to land her double axel consistently at practices but often missed it at competitions because the jump was rushed in the excitement of the moment To solve the problem she inserted into her routine the word easy said very slowly and stretched out just before stepping onto her takeoff foot as a prompt to control the speed of the takeoff Using this key word consistently at practices and then at competitions improved her execution during competitions 11 Describe the generalization strategy referred to as general case programming Describe an example With this approach the teacher begins by identifying the range of relevant stimulus situations to which a learner will be expected to respond and the response variations that might be required Then during training the learner s behavior and acceptable variations are brought under the control of samples of the range of relevant stimuli Sprague and Horner 1984 used this approach to teach adolescents with developmental disabilities to use vending machines by introducing them to a variety of different machines and the responses needed to use them This approach was very effective in producing generalization to enable the learners to subsequently operate any available vending machine with which they came in contact 12 Briefly list three tactics for programming operant response generalization Describe an example of each Train sufficient response exemplars Guess Sailor Rutherford and Baer 1968 taught a girl with a developmental disability to use plural nouns correctly in speech with this technique With prompting and reinforcement they first