Generalization: when the same response occurs for similar stimuli.
Discrimination: learning to respond differently to different stimuli.
These two things are so fascinating. They're opposites of one another, yet they both happen rather frequently.
Let's look at some examples of the two things..
Generalization: when a child learns how to say dog when he sees a specific type of dog (ex. a poodle) and then he says dog again when he sees a different type of dog (ex. a german shepherd) the child has generalized between the two stimuli.
Discrimination: going back to the example of Pavlov's dogs - if the dog had salivated only at the sound of the tone that had been paired with the food and not a similar tone that was slightly different it would have been discriminating.
What I want to know is how does one thing happen over another??
I think that a lot of it has to do with the stimulus and also the persons mindset at the time. It just goes to show you that classical conditioning is just another one of those things we can use the bio-pscho-social approach for!
There are biological influences (genetic predispositions, unconditioned responses, adaptive responses), psychological influences (previous experiences, predictability of associations, generalization, discrimination), and social-cultural influences (culturally learned preferences and motivating, affected by presence of others).
I wonder if people different people are more keen to generalizing or to discrimination. Like people who can tell the difference between things that seem simaler to most people. Are they biologically better at discrimination? Or is there no correlation between the two.
ReplyDelete