Individual Difference Factors in the Learning and Transfer of Patterning Discriminations

Abstract

In an associative patterning task, some people seem to focus more on learning an overarching rule, whereas others seem to focus on acquiring specific relations between the stimuli and outcomes involved. Building on earlier work, we further investigated which cognitive factors are involved in feature- vs. rule-based learning and generalization. To this end, we measured participants' tendency to generalize according to the rule of opposites after training on negative and positive patterning problems (i.e., A+/B+/AB− and C−/D−/CD+), their tendency to attend to global aspects or local details of stimuli, their systemizing disposition and their score on the Raven intelligence test. Our results suggest that while intelligence might have some influence on patterning learning and generalization, visual processing style and systemizing disposition do not. We discuss our findings in the light of previous observations on patterning.

Memory Traces Diminished by Exercise Affect New Learning as Proactive Facilitation

“…Human studies have shown the benefits of long-term memory for learning new information with similar principle (Gerven et al, 2017;Oberauer et al, 2017;Wang et al, 2017). In addition, rule-based learning (combined cues with an abstract principle) has been reported during associative learning both in human and animal studies (Racht-Delatour and Massioui, 1999;Wills et al, 2011;Maes et al, 2017;Broschard et al, 2019). Compared with remembering only separate cues, rule-based learning is more stable with the passing of time and can adjust to various contexts (Hoffmann et al, 2018).…”

Fluid Abilities and Rule Learning: Patterning and Biconditional Discriminations

“…If they transferred the opposites rule from the fully trained set to the transfer set, then they should make opposite outcome predictions on compound trials (i.e., IJ+). This transfer test is similar to that used in previous studies [3,9,10]. We could therefore also investigate which fluid abilities predict performance on transfer trials.…”

“…Wills et al [9] found that individuals with higher working memory capacity had a greater tendency for rule-based generalization. Maes et al [10] found a marginally significant positive correlation between rule-based generalization and abstract reasoning ability, although this was not statistically significant when performance on the training set was controlled for. Finally, Don et al [11] found a positive relationship between rule-based generalization and scores on the Cognitive Reflection Test, which estimates the degree to which individuals’ performance relies on deliberative processes.…”

“…First, it is still unclear which fluid abilities predict rule-based generalization in patterning discriminations. Previous studies [9,10] that have investigated this issue each assessed only one cognitive ability (working memory or reasoning ability) in relatively small samples (60 or fewer participants). But other fluid abilities, such as processing speed and visuospatial ability, might also influence generalization strategies.…”

“…We could therefore also investigate which fluid abilities predict performance on transfer trials. On the basis of previous studies [9,10], we expected at least reasoning ability and working memory to predict performance on the transfer test.…”