Q.How can you distinguish between generalisation and discrimination?

Generalisation and discrimination are opposite responses to similar versus different stimuli, both built on how well an organism recognises the relationship between a new stimulus and the one it was originally conditioned to. …

Generalisation and discrimination are two complementary processes that occur across most forms of learning, though they have been most extensively studied in the context of conditioning.

Generalisation occurs when a learned response, originally conditioned to occur to one specific stimulus, is also elicited by a new stimulus that resembles the original conditioned stimulus. For example, if a child is conditioned to feel afraid of a specific person with a long moustache dressed in black, and the child later shows fear on meeting a different stranger who is also bearded and dressed in black, the child's conditioned fear has generalised to the new but similar stimulus. This is described as the phenomenon of responding similarly to similar stimuli.

Discrimination is the complementary, opposite process: it occurs when an organism responds differently to different stimuli, rather than treating them all the same way. In the same example, if the child later meets a stranger who is clean-shaven and wearing grey clothes, and shows no fear at all, this is discrimination — the child has correctly distinguished this new stimulus as meaningfully different from the original conditioned stimulus. …