Discriminability and stimulus generalization.

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Abstract
Four groups of pigeons were trained under intermittent reward to peck at a patch of nearly monochromatic light. The wave lengths used were 530, 550, 580, and 600 mu, respectively. After the conditioned response reached a high rate, stimulus generalization (irradiation) gradients were obtained by presentation of lights of other wave lengths. For all training lights, the gradients obtained by plotting rate of responding against wave length of test stimulus were of nearly identical form and slope. No confirmation appeared for the hypothesis that the slope of the gradient would be inversely proportional to the wave length difference threshold obtained by psychophysical methods. A family of gradients was determined for various stages of experimental extinction, and another family of curves by comparison of groups of animals of different response strengths. The two families of gradients appear to be describable by the same function of the two variables, wave length and total response strength.
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