The four stages of learning are Acquisition, Fluency, Generalization, Maintenance.

• A. Acquisition, Fluency, Generalization, Maintenance
• B. Stimulus, Response, Reward, Extinction
• C. Acquisition, Generalization, Fluency, Maintenance
• D. Acquisition, Fluency, Maintenance, Generalization

Answer: (C)

The progression being tested is how a behavior is learned and kept over time, moving from initial learning to real-world reliability and then to long-term retention. After acquisition, the next step is generalization: you want the dog to perform the behavior in new locations, with different people, and under varying distractions. Once it generalizes, you work on fluency—the behavior is shown quickly, smoothly, and reliably with minimal prompts across those contexts. Finally, maintenance ensures the behavior persists over time, even with less frequent reinforcement.

This order matters because you don’t want a fast, reliable response that only happens in a single training setting. Ensuring generalization first makes the skill robust across environments, then you build true fluency, and only after that do you focus on long-term retention.