Stimulus Generalization.

Abstract

The empirical concept of stimulus generalization refers to the obvious but highly complex fact that conditioned behavior is displayed to stimuli which have never been presented in conditioning. That stimuli other than the conditioned stimulus will elicit a conditioned response does not require elaborate laboratory demonstration. It is evident when teaching a child vocabulary or when training a dog to fetch. A great deal of laboratory work has been done, however, to specify the phenomenon in detail. This book contains much of that work. As Professor Mostofsky states in his preface, the book is neither a collection of theoretical arguments nor a comprehensive review of the empirical work, it samples both. Of the 22 papers in the book, nine are primarily conceptual or theoretical and in behavioral terms and eleven primarily report behavioral experiments. Only one paper focuses on the neural basis of stimulus generalization, and it is supported by