What is Acquisition in the learning process?

• A. First stage of forgetting
• B. First stage of learning - acquiring new knowledge
• C. Extinction of a behavior
• D. Generalization of a response

Answer: (B)

Acquisition is the initial learning phase where a dog learns to connect a cue with a behavior and the reinforcing consequence. Through repeated cue–response–reward pairings, the likelihood and speed of the correct behavior increase, and the action becomes learned. It’s the process of acquiring the new behavior, not about forgetting, extinction, or generalization. Forgetting would be a decline in a previously learned skill, extinction is the decline of the response when reinforcement stops, and generalization is responding to cues that are similar to the original cue. In training terms, acquisition ends when the behavior is reliably produced in the presence of the cue, with ongoing reinforcement often needed to maintain it.