Gibson (1940) has hypothesized that stimulus generalization during discrimination learning must increase before it can decrease. This hypothesis can be either supported or rejected, depending on the procedures and measures used in testing it. The present paper suggests a different approach to the measurement of the trend of generalization during discrimination learning. The proposed methodology compares similar and dissimilar confusion errors on the first learning trial and the rates of decrease of the exponential functions of the two error types on subsequent trials. The implications of the methodology for transfer and predifferentiation studies are discussed.
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