discriminative stimulus
- noun
- Specialized
:
estímulo discriminativo
- A green light can serve as a discriminative stimulus that indicates when a driver is allowed to go.
- serve as a discriminative stimulus
Examples
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In school settings, instructions themselves may serve as a discriminative stimulus for a student's accurate response.
Academic text (2006) -
Because of the variability in stuttering across settings, it could be assumed that the settings were discriminative stimuli that exerted a degree of control over the students' stuttering.
Academic text (1998) -
A critical component of discrimination of language-based discriminative stimuli is the extent of understanding of the language.
Academic text (2006) -
Finally, Flora (1990) discusses the possibility of discriminative stimuli as another explanation.
Academic text (2004) -
For the five Spanish-speaking ELL students whose performance was better in conditions conducted in Spanish, it is possible that the instructions given at school do not serve as a discriminative stimulus for accurate student response.
Academic text (2006) -
Application of learning principles to the study of pharmacology demonstrated that drugs could also function as discriminative stimuli (Schuster & Balster, 1977).
Academic text (2009) -
This technique has been effectively applied to the characterization and classification of novel entities according to their similarities and dissimilarities by comparing these discriminative stimulus effects to a standard drug with known effects.
Academic text (2009) -
Instead of examining an unobservable construct such as intrinsic motivation, Flora suggests it is more useful to determine the discriminative stimulus and the reinforcers in the environment that maintain a functional relationship.
Academic text (2004) -
The effects of the number of reward administrations (i.e., repeated delivery of rewards is more likely to produce an increase in a target behavior as opposed to a single administration) and discriminative stimuli associated with reward availability (Flora, 1990) have been previously discussed in this article.
Academic text (2004) -
In behavioral experiments, a clear instruction often acts as a discriminative stimulus, helping participants understand how to respond correctly.
Synonyms
224
3.3
A sign or hint that tells someone what to do
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase combines 'discriminative' (making distinctions or signaling) with 'stimulus' (something that triggers a response), so a B1 learner who knows the parts could infer it denotes a stimulus that signals or distinguishes certain responses. However, the precise technical meaning — that it specifically signals the availability of reinforcement and which behavior will be rewarded — is specialized and not fully predictable without exposure to behavioral-psychology usage.
Etymology
Discriminative stimulus comes from training: a light or bell called the stimulus tells an animal the difference between times when an action will get food and when it will not. That's why it means a signal that shows 'which behavior will be rewarded'.