Generalization (Learning)

Generalization, in learning, is the concept that humans, other animals and artificial neural networks apply past learning to a present situation whenever the conditions of that situation are judged similar enough to what came before, using generalized patterns, principles and other similarities between past and novel experiences to navigate the world more efficiently. A person who has learned that eating an apple made their throat itch and swell, for instance, might assume they are allergic to all fruit, and reject a banana on that same generalized assumption, even though the inference may hold in some cases and fail in others. Both positive and negative effects of learned generalization have been documented in education, alongside its contrasting counterpart, discrimination learning.