PSYC 3450 Lecture Notes - Lecture 14: Starbucks, Electrodermal Activity, Discrimination Learning
28 Mar 2017
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Document Summary
In a laboratory situation, most animals can easily learn an association between a particular stimulus and an outcome. But in the real world, stimuli are rarely identical, and other conditions may change. For learning to be useful, it needs to apply to situations similar to, but not necessarily identical to, the training situation: we call this kind of learning stimulus generalization. The optimal level of generality in learning will depend on the kind of learning, the uniqueness of the stimuli, and various other factors. Ideally, we want to be able to rapidly adjust the generality of learning to best match the current situation. The situation that you"re in should affect the generality of your responses to stimuli somewhat similar to conditioned stimuli. Maybe it makes sense for me to react to stimuli in a very discriminative way when i"m in a very safe situation to a fear stimulus.
