Although individual differences in category-learning tasks have been explored, the observed differences have tended to represent different instantiations of general processes (e.g., learners rely upon different cues to develop a rule) and their consequent representations. Additionally, studies have focused largely on participants' categorizations of transfer items to determine the representations that they formed. In the present studies, we used a convergent-measures approach to examine participants' categorizations of transfer items in addition to their self-reported learning orientations and response times on transfer items, and in doing so, we garnered evidence that qualitatively distinct approaches in explicit strategies for category learning (i.e., memorization vs. abstracting an articulable rule) and consequent representations might emerge in a single task. Participants categorized instances that followed a categorization rule (in Study 1, we used a relational rule; in Study 2, an additional task with a single-feature rule). Critically, for both tasks, some transfer items differed from trained instances on only one attribute (but otherwise were perceptually similar), rendering the item a member of the opposing category on the basis of the rule (i.e., termed ambiguous items). Some learners categorized ambiguous items on the basis of perceptual similarity, whereas others categorized them on the basis of an abstracted rule. Self-reported learning orientation (i.e., memorization vs. rule abstraction) predicted categorizations and response times on transfer items. Differences in learning orientations were not associated with performance on other cognitive measures (i.e., working memory capacity and Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices). This work suggests that individuals may have different predispositions toward memorization versus rule abstraction in a single categorization task.
Although the testing effect has received a substantial amount of empirical attention, such research has largely focused on the effects of tests given after study. The present research examines the effect of using tests prior to study (i.e., as pretests), focusing particularly on how pretesting influences the subsequent learning of information that is not itself pretested but that is related to the pretested information. In Experiment 1, we found that multiple-choice pretesting was better for the learning of such related information than was cued-recall pretesting or a pre-fact-study control condition. In Experiment 2, we found that the increased learning of nonpretested related information following multiple-choice testing could not be attributed to increased time allocated to that information during subsequent study. Last, in Experiment 3, we showed that the benefits of multiple-choice pretesting over cued-recall pretesting for the learning of related information persist over 48 hours, thus demonstrating the promise of multiple-choice pretesting to potentiate learning in educational contexts. A possible explanation for the observed benefits of multiple-choice pretesting for enhancing the effectiveness with which related nontested information is learned during subsequent study is discussed.Keywords Pretesting . Testing effects . Learning . Multiple choice . Test-potentiated learning That pretesting can potentiate the learning of pretested information during subsequent study has been demonstrated for a variety of materials and across a variety of methodologies (e.g., Arnold & McDermott, 2013;Kornell, Hays, & Bjork, 2009). This finding has clear applications for learning in educational contexts (Anderson & Biddle, 1975;Kane & Anderson, 1978;Pressley, Tanenbaum, McDaniel, & Wood, 1990;Richland, Kornell, & Kao;Rothkopf, 1966). Relatively little work, however, has examined whether such pretesting can also potentiate the learning of information that was not itself pretested, or instead, whether the learning of such information might be impaired by such pretesting. This question is particularly pertinent to conditions in which such non-pretested material is related to, and thereby potentially confusable or competitive with, the specifically pretested information.The issue raised previously is important because students are often presented with large amounts of related and thus potentially confusable information (e.g., anatomy, geography, history courses), and they are sometimes pretested on subsets of that information (e.g., with Bclicker^questions presented at the beginning of a lecture), followed by more comprehensive exams that would actually count toward their grades and that would include the testing of non-pretested related information as well. Of particular interest in the present research was whether, and if so how, pretesting might improve the learning of such related, and thus possibly competitive, non-pretested information. The present research
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