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Generalizing from the Past, Choosing the Future.

Sarah Cowie1, Michael Davison1

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Perspectives on Behavior Science
|July 11, 2020
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Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Past experiences help organisms predict future events and guide present behavior. Generalization enables organisms to use past learning to navigate current environments adaptively, forming the basis of prospective control.

Keywords:
GeneralizationProspective controlStimulus control

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Area of Science:

  • Behavioral science
  • Cognitive science
  • Neuroscience

Background:

  • Present behavior relies on past experiences in similar environments.
  • Past experience influences behavior by enabling environmental structure detection.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To explore a prospective-control approach to understanding simple behavior.
  • To investigate how generalization impacts the use of past experience for future prediction and response.

Main Methods:

  • Examining how generalization across event dimensions affects environmental control over behavior.
  • Analyzing generalization from past to present for decision-making (when, where, what to do).

Main Results:

  • Generalization is key to detecting environmental structure and predicting future outcomes.
  • Prospective control uses past experiences as building blocks for future predictions.
  • Generalization facilitates adaptive and maladaptive behavioral responses.

Conclusions:

  • Generalization is fundamental to prospective control, enabling organisms to use past experiences to predict and respond to future events.
  • This approach offers a testable framework for understanding behavior without assuming agency.