The purpose of this study was focusing on the extent 7 ^th grade students are capable of establishing and justifying complicated generalizations that entail possible overlap of aspects of the figures. This explorative qualitative research was conducted in private junior high school in Tuban East Java Indonesia. Data collected by think alouds and video recording, that is when completing the pattern generalization task, students expressed their thoughts orally. In addition, interviews are also conducted to complement the data that has not been collected by think alouds. The data has been collected and then analyzed using qualitative data analysis techniques. We specify three forms of generalization involving such figural linear patterns: constructive standard; constructive nonstandard; and deconstructive; and we classify these forms of generalization according to complexity based on student work. We document students’ cognitive tendency to shift from a figural to a numerical strategy in determining their figural based patterns, and we observe the not always salutary consequences of such a shift in their representational fluency and inductive justifications.