ACQUIRED EQUIVALENCES AND MEDIATED GENERALIZATION

描述(摘自申请者的摘要)：本项目的目标 是为了了解非人类动物是如何对待身体上的不同 刺激物作为行为等价物的方式不能用 感觉上的相似性。使用标准的双选条件 对其他基础学习和记忆研究的共同辨析 该项目将评估不同培训的效果。 产生获得性刺激等价物的经验以及为什么一些 尽管有相当大的重叠，但经验比其他经验更有效。在……里面 建议的研究，不同的歧视性刺激最初将共享 与另一个刺激和/或反应的共同关系。之后， 不同但共同关联的歧视之间的等价性 将通过直接训练对其中一些刺激的新反应来评估刺激 然后观察剩余的刺激是否也控制了新的 回应。简而言之，新的行为函数是否会从 直接对未经训练(测试)的刺激进行训练，如果设置了 是等同的吗？这项研究的一个主要焦点是评估 共同的、调停的表述对歧视性表述的制约 训练中的刺激是这种泛化的来源，以及 调解代表可能是。这一结果将对 理解新奇的行为，这是人类的一个显著特征，也可以 出现在其他动物身上，尽管没有直接(强化)的训练 以及任何已知的语言能力。

DESCRIPTION (Adapted from applicant's abstract): The goal of this project is to understand how non-human animals come to treat physically different stimuli as behavioral equivalents in ways that cannot be explained by perceptual similarity. Using standard, two-choice conditional discriminations common to studies of other basic learning and memory processes, the project will assess the effectiveness of different training experiences in producing acquired stimulus equivalences and why some experiences are more effective than others despite considerable overlap. In the proposed studies, different discriminative stimuli will initially share a common relationship to another stimulus and/or response. Afterwards, equivalences between the different but commonly associated discriminative stimuli will be evaluated by directly training new responses to some of them and then observing whether or not the remaining stimuli also control the new responses. In short, will the new behavioral function generalize from the directly trained to the untrained (test) stimuli, as expected if the sets are equivalent? A major focus of this research is to assess whether or not conditioning of a common, mediating representation to the discriminative stimuli during training is the source of such generalization and what that mediating representation might be. The results will be important for understanding how novel behavior, one notable human characteristic, can also emerge in other animals despite the absence of direct (reinforced) training and any known language ability.