Further notes on Concept
Formation
Erwin Segal
Hull's study
(1920) was based on increasing the strength of associations in
order to learn concepts. It can easily be explained with a connectionist type
model.
Examples of Hull's concept exemplars
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Continuity and discontinuity
Kendler's Reversal
learning study gave similar tasks to rats, approximately 3year old children,
5 year olds and adults. This study found different patterns of responses
among different subject groups.
This study puts a strain on simple strengthening of association
elements. It seems to support some kind of selective attention to certain
dimensions of the stimulus at times, especially for subjects that have linguistic
skills. Researchers have shown similar processes of selection in nonlinguistic
animals, but it requires more learning or special conditions.
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Stimuli used by Bruner, Goodnow and Austin (1956) for the study of learning
concepts based on orthogonal Aristotelean features of concepts. This study
presented data that purportedly showed that people attempt to solve category
learning problems by using strategies.
This study was the frst of many that developed hypothesis
testing as a major component of many categorization tasks. It was much
more complicated in design and analysis than many other studies which highlighted
specific processes more clearly.
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