Prior Experience Shapes Abstraction and Generalization in Language Acquisition

G eneralization, or the ability to extend what one has learned beyond instances or exemplars already encountered, is central to human behav-ior. To give just a few examples, we easily recognize new instances of dogs, apples, and cars, and we recognize the labels for those objects even when they are pronounced in an unfamiliar voice or accent. The study of generalization thus sheds light on fundamental learning processes across diverse domains, such as perception, categorization, and language acquisition.