Question at position 3 Mark's dog, Gus, sits whenever he says, "Sit." Mark now wants to teach Gus a new trick. He wants to teach him to bark each time he says, "Speak," but whenever Mark says, "Speak," Gus sits. The dog's behavior is an example ofcontiguous occurrencesgeneralizationextinctioncontingent occurrenceshabituation

Question

Question at position 3 Mark's dog, Gus, sits whenever he says, "Sit." Mark now wants to teach Gus a new trick. He wants to teach him to bark each time he says, "Speak," but whenever Mark says, "Speak," Gus sits. The dog's behavior is an example ofcontiguous occurrencesgeneralizationextinctioncontingent occurrenceshabituation

BlackTom AI · Accepted Answer

Question and options restated:
- Question: Mark’s dog Gus sits whenever he says, "Sit." Now Mark wants to teach Gus a new trick: bark each time he says, "Speak," but whenever Mark says, "Speak," Gus sits. The behavior is an example of which concept?
- Answer options: 
  1) contiguous occurrences 
  2) generalization 
  3) extinction 
  4) contingent occurrences 
  5) habituation

Option 1: contiguous occurrences. This term would imply that the behaviors or responses occur next to each other in time without gaps. In this scenario, the dog’s sitting when hearing the cue occurs in a linked manner with the cue, but the core distinction here is what the dog has learned to do in response to the cue, not merely the temporal proximity of events. The example focuses on the learned relationship between cue and response, not simply the timing adjacency, so this option doesn’t capture the central principle.

Option 2: generalization. Generalization refers to applying a learned response to stimuli that are similar but not identical to the original cue. In this case, Gus has learned to sit to the cue phrase and is now being asked to bark to a cue that is the same word "Speak," while the current behavior is to sit. Depending on how the training transfers across similar verbal cues or contexts, this scenario is often discussed in terms of a generalized control over the cue-response relationship, where the dog responds to the cue with the same or a closely related behavior across different contexts or prompts. The question frames a shift in the expected response to a familiar cue, which aligns with a generalization framework in behavior concepts.

Option 3: extinction. Extinction involves the reduction or elimination of a learned response when reinforcement is withheld. Here, there is no description of withholding reinforcement for the sit response to "Speak" or a process by which the sit response diminishes over time; rather, the setup is about establishing a new or alternative response (barking) to the cue. So extinction does not fit the scenario.

Option 4: contingent occurrences. The term would imply that some response happens only when specific conditions are met, or that occurrences are directly tied to particular contingencies. While the situation does involve contingencies (cue predicting a response), the common behavioral psychology term most appropriately describing the broader pattern of applying a learned cue to a new or extended response set is not typically labeled as “contingent occurrences.” This makes the option less precise for this context.

Option 5: habituation. Habituation describes a decreased response to repeated exposure to a stimulus over time. The dog is not showing a diminished response to the cue; instead, the goal is to establish a new response (barking) to the cue while the old response (sitting) is still tied to the same cue. Therefore habituation does not capture the core phenomenon here.

Putting it together, the choice labeled as correct emphasizes the use or transfer of a learned response pattern to a broader or differently applied context of the cue, which aligns with the concept of generalization. It captures the idea that the dog’s response to cues can extend beyond a single, narrowly defined reaction to encompass related responses across similar prompts, fitting the generalization framework best among the options.

Note on alternatives: Contiguous occurrences focuses on timing adjacency and would be more about the temporal proximity of events rather than the type of learned relationship. Extinction involves the loss of a response due to lack of reinforcement, which is not described here. Contingent occurrences is a plausible label for contingency-based behavior, but it’s not the standard term that captures the broad aspect of applying a learned response to related cues. Habituation would describe a declining response with repetition, which is not present in the described teaching scenario.

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