Which concept involves randomly varying functionally irrelevant stimuli to promote generalization?

• A. Teaching loosely
• B. Teaching sufficient exemplars
• C. Temporal extent
• D. Temporal locus

Answer: (A)

Generalization happens when a learner applies a skill to new situations. Teaching loosely does exactly that by randomly varying aspects of the training that don’t change the meaning of the task. By keeping the essential relationship or rule the same and changing functionally irrelevant features—such as different backgrounds, different people delivering the instruction, or different exemplars—the learner learns to respond to the core cue rather than to any one specific setup. This helps the behavior transfer to new dogs, new classrooms, new contexts, or new materials, because the learner isn’t tied to a single stimulus or moment in time.

For example, if you’re teaching the concept of “dog” using many dogs of different breeds, colors, and settings, and you mix in these variations randomly during teaching, the learner is more likely to identify dogs in unfamiliar contexts later on. In contrast, other strategies focus on different goals: providing many exemplars helps ensure exposure to variation, but doesn’t emphasize randomizing irrelevant features during instruction; temporal extent and temporal locus deal with how long or when a behavior occurs, not with broadening the stimulus set for generalization.