Initial training with difficult items does not facilitate category learning

Edmunds, Charlotte; Wills, Andy J.; Milton, Fraser

doi:10.1080/17470218.2017.1370477

Cited by 11 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…Ashby et al, 1998;Kemler Nelson, 1984;Smith & Shapiro, 1989;Ward, 1983), it is fully consistent with a substantial body of more recent work, across several different procedures. For example, it is consistent with results from the match-to-standards procedure Milton & Wills, 2004;Milton et al, 2009;Wills et al, 2013), the triad procedure (Wills et al, 2015), the criterial-attribute procedure (Wills et al, 2015), and information-integration category learning procedure (Carpenter et al, 2016;Edmunds et al, 2015Edmunds et al, , 2018Edmunds et al, , 2019Newell et al, 2013). It finds support from not only human behavioral data, but also from comparative work with rats and pigeons (Lea et al, 2018(Lea et al, , 2006Wills et al, 2009) and from functional imaging data in humans (Carpenter et al, 2016;Milton et al, 2009).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 75%

A dimensional summation account of polymorphous category learning

Wills¹,

Ellett²,

Milton³

et al. 2019

Preprint

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Polymorphous concepts are hard to learn, and this is perhaps surprising because they, like many natural concepts, have an overall similarity structure. However, the dimensional summation hypothesis (Milton & Wills, 2004) predicts this difficulty. It also makes a number of other predictions about polymorphous concept formation, which are tested here. In Experiment 1 we confirm the theory's prediction that polymorphous concept formation should be facilitated by deterministic pretraining on the constituent features of the stimulus. This facilitation is relative to an equivalent amount of training on the polymorphous concept itself. In Experiments 2--4, the dimensional summation account of this single feature pretraining effect is contrasted with some other accounts, including a more general strategic account (Experiment 2), seriality of training and stimulus decomposition accounts (Experiment 3), and the role of errors (Experiment 4). The dimensional summation hypothesis provides the best account of these data. In Experiment 5, a further prediction is confirmed --- the single feature pretraining effect is eliminated by a concurrent counting task. The current experiments suggest the hypothesis that natural concepts might be acquired by the deliberate serial summation of evidence. This idea has testable implications for classroom learning.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 75%

A dimensional summation account of polymorphous category learning

Wills¹,

Ellett²,

Milton³

et al. 2019

Preprint

Self Cite

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“…Edmunds et al (2015) and Edmunds, Wills, and Milton (2016) reported that participants learning information-integration category structures consistently reported using complex, rule-based strategies. Edmunds et al (2015) and Edmunds, Wills, and Milton (2016) reported that participants learning information-integration category structures consistently reported using complex, rule-based strategies.…”

Section: Implications For Verbal Report and Db Analysesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Our simulations are consistent with the idea that participants can correctly report their categorization strategies for information-integration category structures. Edmunds et al (2015) and Edmunds, Wills, and Milton (2016) reported that participants learning information-integration category structures consistently reported using complex, rule-based strategies. In contrast, the DB analysis in those papers identified these participants as using a Procedural (diagonal) strategy.…”

Section: Implications For Verbal Report and Db Analysesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Due Process in Dual Process: Model‐Recovery Simulations of Decision‐Bound Strategy Analysis in Category Learning

2018

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Behavioral evidence for the COVIS dual-process model of category learning has been widely reported in over a hundred publications (Ashby & Valentin, ). It is generally accepted that the validity of such evidence depends on the accurate identification of individual participants' categorization strategies, a task that usually falls to Decision Bound analysis (Maddox & Ashby, ). Here, we examine the accuracy of this analysis in a series of model-recovery simulations. In Simulation 1, over a third of simulated participants using an Explicit (conjunctive) strategy were misidentified as using a Procedural strategy. In Simulation 2, nearly all simulated participants using a Procedural strategy were misidentified as using an Explicit strategy. In Simulation 3, we re-examined a recently reported COVIS-supporting dissociation (Smith et al., ) and found that these misidentification errors permit an alternative, single-process, explanation of the results. Implications for due process in the future evaluation of dual-process theories, including recommendations for future practice, are discussed.

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“…However, they present no evidence in support of this claim. When awareness is measured in this task, participants readily verbalize multi-dimensional strategies (Edmunds et al, 2015;Edmunds et al, 2019). The strongest tenable version of Smith and Church's argument is thus that the strategies participants verbalize are not the ones they use.…”

Section: The Information-integration Category-learning Taskmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dissociable learning processes, associative theory, and testimonial reviews: A comment on Smith and Church (2018)

et al. 2019

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Smith and Church (Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 25, 1565-1584 2018) present a "testimonial" review of dissociable learning processes in comparative and cognitive psychology, by which we mean they include only the portion of the available evidence that is consistent with their conclusions. For example, they conclude that learning the information-integration category-learning task with immediate feedback is implicit, but do not consider the evidence that people readily report explicit strategies in this task, nor that this task can be accommodated by accounts that make no distinction between implicit and explicit processes. They also consider some of the neuroscience relating to information-integration category learning, but do not report those aspects that are more consistent with an explicit than an implicit account. They further conclude that delay conditioning in humans is implicit, but do not report evidence that delay conditioning requires awareness; nor do they present the evidence that conditioned taste aversion, which should be explicit under their account, can be implicit. We agree with Smith and Church that it is helpful to have a clear definition of associative theory, but suggest that their definition may be unnecessarily restrictive. We propose an alternative definition of associative theory and briefly describe an experimental procedure that we think may better distinguish between associative and non-associative processes.

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Initial training with difficult items does not facilitate category learning

Cited by 11 publications

References 45 publications

A dimensional summation account of polymorphous category learning

A dimensional summation account of polymorphous category learning

Due Process in Dual Process: Model‐Recovery Simulations of Decision‐Bound Strategy Analysis in Category Learning

Dissociable learning processes, associative theory, and testimonial reviews: A comment on Smith and Church (2018)

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