Cognitive Psychology, 2 nd Ed. Chapter 9 Learning Concepts and Skills

Concept Learning Understanding space-time is fundamental. Object permanance allows an infant to represent objects are permanent entities that do not vanish when out of sight. 4-5 month olds make the AB error in searching for a missing object. By 9 months the concept is grasped. But even at 5 months preferential viewing of a novel number of objects suggests the beginnings of object permanance and numerosity.

Concept Learning Basic concepts constitute the most informative level of object categorization. Its characteristic features are common and correlated (e.g., bird). Subordinate concepts are even more so, but carve the world at too fine a grain (e.g. crow). Superordinate concepts are too general (animal). Frequency of exposure rather than hierarchical level appears to determine age of acquisition. Infants learn dog-cat-bird contrasts because of frequent examples.

Learning Processes The frequency of occurrence of stimulus features is automatically accumulated, providing a basis for identifying defining features and typicality effects. Learners also actively test hypotheses, requiring controlled processing in working memory, to identify defining features.

Prototype Acquisition Abstraction of a central tendency prototype may involve processes that calculate either mean, median, or modal values. Instead a frequency count and perceptual error may account for apparent variations. The mode may only look like the mean or median. Nonanalytic strategy of storing specific examplars is an alternative to abstraction. Cortical dissociation in neuroimaging plus behavioral data suggest exemplar storage is insufficient by itself to explain abstraction.

Implicit Learning Refers to the unconscious acquisition of complex rules that cannot be verbalized. Implicit tasks involve many stimulus dimensions related by complex rules, not simple conjuctions and disjunctions. Artificial, finite state grammars reflect the complexity of natural language grammars. Learners can categorize new strings but cannot articulate the underlying rules. Implicit learning or examplar storage are contrasting explanations.

Implicit vs.Explicit Learning Connectionist (frequencies) or symbolic (rule). U-Mode-unselective, passive, unreportable. Symbolic rule or specific exemplars. S-Mode-selective, effortful, and reportable.

Acquiring Expertise Skills involve perceptual, motor, and cognitive functioning. Contrast running versus reading, for example. Skills require procedural nondeclarative memory, but declarative memory is further involved in learning about a domain (e.g., contrast a pro football player with a surgeon).

Expert-Novice Differences Refer to differences in mental representations and cognitive processes associated with domain-specific expertise. Comparisons of average person with world- class performer in chess, mathematics, music, dance tennis, skating, medical diagnosis and more have shed light on skill learning.

Skill Acquisition Early, intermediate, and final stages of acquisition moves from declarative, controlled learning to procedural, automatic performance. Principal of procedural reinstatement states that a skill is well-retained for long periods of time when the procedures used to acquire it are reinstated precisely at test. Skills can be immune from forgetting, but transfer to new conditions negligible. Deliberate practice for 10 years minimum needed to attain world class performance.

Expert-Novice Differences Folk theories of novices cause reasoning errors in physics problems. Experts unaffected by problem context. Metacognitive control--experts reflect on problem first before calculating. Experts mnemonically encode information and develop sophisticated retrieval structures for rapid access to information in long-term memory (sometimes called long-term working memory). Speed increases and errors decrease with practice according to a power law.