Direct and indirect effects of perception on generalization gradients

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Behavioral Science

Background:

• Understanding behavioral generalization across situations is a long-standing research question.
• Significant variation in conditioned responding within and between individuals challenges current generalization models.
• The role of perceptual differences in explaining behavioral variation remains underexplored.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the extent to which perceptual differences contribute to behavioral variation during generalization.
• To examine the relationship between perceptual accuracy and conditioned responding.
• To explore how perceptual errors influence perceived stimulus-outcome contingencies and subsequent learning.

Main Methods:

• Combined a fear conditioning and generalization paradigm with a perceptual decision task in human participants.
• Assessed participants' ability to discriminate between trained fear-evoking stimuli and novel stimuli.
• Measured conditioned responding and perceived stimulus-outcome contingencies.

Main Results:

• Failure to perceive a novel stimulus as distinct from the trained stimulus resulted in heightened conditioned responding.
• Perceptual errors led to significant discrepancies between objective and perceived stimulus-outcome contingencies.
• The influence of perceptual errors on behavior was moderated by the resulting perceived contingencies.

Conclusions:

• Perceptual errors are a key driver of generalization across perceptual dimensions.
• These errors directly impact behavior and indirectly shape individual learning experiences.
• Findings highlight the importance of considering perceptual variability in generalization models.