Abstract
Researchers have argued that different categorization problems are learned by separate and distinct cognitive systems. They propose that an explicit system is responsible for learning rule-based categories and that a separate implicit system learns information-integration categories. One source of supporting evidence involves experiments in which observers perform a concurrent memory-scanning task that interferes with the processing of feedback. Researchers have reported a dissociation in which this manipulation impairs learning of a rule-based category but not an information-integration category. In the present research, we test the hypothesis that the dissociation was the result of lowered perceptual discriminability in the rule-based structure in comparison with the information-integration one. We demonstrate an example of an alternate rule-based category with easy-todiscriminate stimuli in which performance is unaffected by the interfering memory-scanning task. Furthermore, we demonstrate that learning of an information-integration category with low perceptual discriminability is impaired by the memory-scanning task. These demonstrations of the reverse dissociation challenge the interpretation that rule-based and information-integration category structures are learned by separate cognitive systems.
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This work was supported by Grant R01 MH48494 from the National Institute of Mental Health.
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Stanton, R.D., Nosofsky, R.M. Feedback interference and dissociations of classification: Evidence against the multiple-learning-systems hypothesis. Memory & Cognition 35, 1747–1758 (2007). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03193507
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03193507