generalisation
Học thuậtThân thiện
A child learns that all four-legged animals are called 'animals' through generalisation.
Definition
- Noun:
- (Psychology) Stimulus Generalization: The transfer of a learned response from one specific stimulus to other, similar stimuli.
- (Logic) Inductive Reasoning: The process of reasoning from specific, detailed facts or instances to form broader, general principles or conclusions.
- (Cognitive Process) Concept Formation: The mental process of formulating a general concept by identifying and abstracting the common properties shared by multiple specific instances.
- A General Statement or Principle: An idea, conclusion, or statement that has broad application, often omitting specific details or exceptions.
Usage Examples
- Noun:
- The child's fear of a specific white dog showed generalisation to all small, fluffy animals. (Psychology: transfer of response)
- Through careful observation of numerous falling objects, the scientist made a generalisation about gravity. (Logic: reasoning from specifics)
- The generalisation of the concept "vehicle" comes from seeing cars, buses, and bicycles. (Cognitive: forming a concept)
- His speech was full of sweeping generalisations and lacked supporting evidence. (A broad, often oversimplified statement)
Advanced Usage
"Hasty Generalisation": A logical fallacy where a broad conclusion is drawn from insufficient or unrepresentative evidence.
- Claiming all politicians are corrupt based on one scandal is a hasty generalisation.
"Overgeneralisation": Applying a rule or conclusion too broadly, often beyond its valid context.
- The linguistic overgeneralisation led the child to say "goed" instead of "went".
Variants and Related Words
Generalize (verb): To make a general statement or form a general principle.
- It is dangerous to generalize about an entire culture from a single experience.
General (adjective): Involving or applicable to all or most cases; not specific.
- She provided a general overview before discussing the details.
Synonyms
- Abstraction: The process of considering something independently of its associations or attributes.
- Induction: The inference of a general law from particular instances.
- Stereotype: A widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing (often carries a negative connotation when used as a synonym for an unsupported generalization).
Related Phrases
To make a generalization: To state a general rule or principle.
- Based on the data, we can make a generalization about consumer trends.
Broad generalization: A statement that is very wide-ranging and lacks precision.
- The report was criticized for its broad generalizations about economic causes.
Related Idioms
- "The exception that proves the rule": Often used when a generalization is challenged by a counterexample, implying the generalization is still mostly true.
- He's very tidy, which is the exception that proves the rule about messy artists. (Note: This idiom is frequently used to defend a generalization.)
A child learns that all four-legged animals are called 'animals' through generalisation.
Noun
- (psychology) transfer of a response learned to one stimulus to a similar stimulus
- reasoning from detailed facts to general principles
- the process of formulating general concepts by abstracting common properties of instances
- an idea or conclusion having general application
- he spoke in broad generalities