Health Psychology, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, KU Leuven, Tiensestraat 102, Box 3726, 3000, Leuven, Belgium.
Center for the Psychology of Learning and Experimental Psychopathology, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, KU Leuven, Tiensestraat 102, Box 3712, 3000, Leuven, Belgium.
Psychon Bull Rev. 2021 Feb;28(1):1-19. doi: 10.3758/s13423-020-01780-1.
The generalization of learned behavior has been extensively investigated, but accounting for variance in generalized responding remains a challenge. Based on recent advances, we demonstrate that the inclusion of perceptual measures in generalization research may lead to a better understanding of both intra- and interindividual differences in generalization. We explore various ways through which perceptual variability can influence generalized responding. We investigate its impact on the ability to discriminate between stimuli and how similarity between stimuli may be variable, rather than fixed, because of it. Subsequently, we argue that perceptual variations can yield different learning experiences and that interindividual differences in generalized responding may be understood from this perspective. Finally, we point to the role of memory and decision-making within this context. Throughout this paper, we argue that accounting for perception in current generalization protocols will improve the precision of obtained generalization gradients and the ability to infer latent mechanisms. This can inspire future attempts to use generalization gradients as a (clinical) predictor or to relate them to individual traits and neural correlates and, ultimately, may lead to new theoretical and clinical insights.
学习行为的泛化已经得到了广泛的研究，但解释泛化反应的差异仍然是一个挑战。基于最近的进展，我们证明，在泛化研究中纳入感知测量可能会更好地理解个体内和个体间的泛化差异。我们探索了感知变异性可以通过多种方式影响泛化反应。我们研究了它对刺激区分能力的影响，以及由于感知变异性，刺激之间的相似性可能是可变的，而不是固定的。随后，我们认为感知变化可以产生不同的学习体验，并且可以从这个角度理解个体间泛化反应的差异。最后，我们指出了记忆和决策在这一背景下的作用。在本文中，我们认为在当前的泛化方案中考虑感知将提高获得的泛化梯度的精度，并提高推断潜在机制的能力。这可以激发未来尝试将泛化梯度用作（临床）预测指标，或将其与个体特征和神经相关性联系起来，并最终可能带来新的理论和临床见解。
