Abstract
It is generally agreed that concept learning involves the abstraction of some general representation or schema. Just what is abstracted, however, and how it is used in the classification of sets of stimuli in the natural world or in the laboratory, remain outstanding questions. In this paper a hypothesis involving contingency abstraction is described as a possible solution to these questions. An experiment which manipulated measured contingency in a concept-learning task, and which offered empirical support for the hypothesis, is reported. The advantages of a contingency-abstraction theory of concept learning are briefly discussed.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bartlett, F.C. (1932). Remembering. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bourne, L. (1966). Human Conceptual Behaviour. Boston: Allyn &: Bacon.
Colwell, R.K. (1974). Predictability, constancy, and contingency of periodic phenomena. Ecology, 55, 1148–1153.
Edelman, G.M. &: Mountcastle, V.B. (1978). The Mindful Brain: Cortical Organisation and the Group-Selective Theory of Higher Brain Functions. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Evans, S. H. (1967). A brief statement of schema theory. Psychonomic Science, 8, 87–88.
Franks, J.J. &: Bransford, J.O. (1971). Abstraction of visual patterns. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 90, 65–74.
Goldman, D. &: Homa, D. (1977). Integrative and metric properties of abstracted information as a function of category discriminability, instance variability, and experience. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory, 3, 375–385.
Hayes-Roth, B. &: Hayes-Roth, F. (1977). Concept learning and the classification of exemplars. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behaviour, 16, 321–338.
Homa, D., Cross, J., Cornell, D., Goldrnan, D. & Schwartz, S. (1973). Prototype abstraction and classification of new instances as a function of number of instances defining the prototype. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 101, 116–122.
Kullback, S. (1968). Information Theory and Statistics. New York: Dover.
Lasky, R.E. &: Kallio, K.D. (1978). Transforrnation rules in concept learning. Memory and Cognition, 6, 491–495.
Medin, D. L. & Schaffer, M. M. (1978). Context theory of classification learning. Psychological Review, 85, 207–238.
Neumann, P.G. (1974). An attribute frequency model for the abstraction of prototypes. Memory and Cognition, 2, 241–248.
Neumann, P.G. (1977). Visual prototype formation with discontinuous representation of dimensions of variability. Memory and Cognition, 5, 187–197.
Posner, M.I. & Keele, S. W. (1968). On the genesis of abstract ideas. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 77, 353–363.
Posner, M I. & Keele, S. W. (1970). The retention of abstract ideas. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 79, 304–308.
Reed, S.K. (1972). Pattern recognition and categorisation. Cognitive Psychology, 3, 382–407.
Solso, R.L. & McCarthy, J.E. (1981). Prototype formation: central tendency model versus attribute-frequency model. Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, 17, 10–11
Strange, W., Kenney, T., Kessel, F. & Jenkins, J. (1970). Abstraction over time of prototypes from distortions of random dot patterns. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 83, 505–510.
Strauss, M.S. (1979). Abstraction of prototypical information by adults and 10-month-old infants. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory, 5, 618–632.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Richardson, K., Bhavnani, K.K. & Browne, D. Abstraction of contingency in concept learning. Current Psychological Research 2, 101–109 (1982). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03186750
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03186750