Discrimination learning

Discrimination learning is defined in psychology as the ability to respond differently to different stimuli. This type of learning is used in studies regarding operant and classical conditioning. Operant conditioning involves the modification of a behavior by means of reinforcement or punishment. In this way, a discriminative stimulus will act as an indicator to when a behavior will persist and when it will not. Classical conditioning involves learning through association when two stimuli are paired together repeatedly. This conditioning demonstrates discrimination through specific micro-instances of reinforcement and non-reinforcement. This phenomenon is considered to be more advanced than learning styles such as generalization and yet simultaneously acts as a basic unit to learning as a whole. The complex and fundamental nature of discrimination learning allows for psychologists and researchers to perform more in-depth research that supports psychological advancements. Research on the basic principles underlying this learning style has their roots in neuropsychology sub-processes.

Discrimination learning is defined in psychology as the ability to respond differently to different stimuli. This type of learning is used in studies regarding operant and classical conditioning. Operant conditioning involves the modification of a behavior by means of reinforcement or punishment. In this way, a discriminative stimulus will act as an indicator to when a behavior will persist and when it will not. Classical conditioning involves learning through association when two stimuli are paired together repeatedly. This conditioning demonstrates discrimination through specific micro-instances of reinforcement and non-reinforcement. This phenomenon is considered to be more advanced than learning styles such as generalization and yet simultaneously acts as a basic unit to learning as a whole. The complex and fundamental nature of discrimination learning allows for psychologists and researchers to perform more in-depth research that supports psychological advancements. Research on the basic principles underlying this learning style has their roots in neuropsychology sub-processes. ==Applications== Discrimination learning is used almost every subfield of psychology as it is a basic form of learning that is at the core of human intelligence. Examples of this include but are not limited to, cognitive psychology, personality psychology, developmental psychology, etc. It was a classic topic in the psychology of learning from the 1920s to the 1970s, and was particularly investigated within: comparative psychology, where a key issue was whether continuous or discontinuous learning processes were concerned in the acquisition of discriminations human cognitive psychology the experimental analysis of behaviour, where a key issue was whether discriminations could be trained without the necessity for the subject to make errors developmental psychology, where a key issue was the changes that occur in the process of discrimination as a function of age cross-cultural psychology, where a key issue was the role that the cultural appropriateness of the stimuli to be discriminated played in the rate of acquisition of effective discrimination mathematical psychology, where attempts were made to formalise the distinctions being drawn in other branches of psychology. Discrimination learning can almost become an unconscious process for many people. It becomes integrated into daily routines. Examples of discrimination learning in everyday life can include grocery shopping, determining how to decipher between the types of bread or fruit, being able to tell similar stimuli apart, differentiating between different parts while listening to music, or perhaps deciphering the different notes and chords being played. While interest in the learning of discriminations has continued in many fields, from about 1980 onwards the phrase "discrimination learning" was used less often as the main description either of individual studies or of a field of investigation. Instead, investigations of the learning of discriminations have tended to be described in other terms such as pattern recognition or concept discrimination. This change partly reflects the increasing diversity of studies of discrimination, and partly the general expansion of the topic of cognition within psychology, so that learning is not now the central organizing topic that it was in the mid-20th century.

Text derived from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1317318539 under CC BY-SA 4.0; modifications have been made.