Abstract
An experiment was carried out to assess the relative merits of the differentiation and association theories of perceptual learning. Two Hebrew and two Roman characters were used to form stimuli describable by three orthogonal dimensions: form, system, and name. Two groups of subjects, who differed in their ability to read Hebrew, did a series of card sorting tasks. The results indicated that the subjects who could read Hebrew were able to use the name dimension in a classification task, whereas the non-Hebrew readers were not. This finding shows that long-term associative learning can facilitate perceptual classification.
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This work was conducted while S. J. Tetewsky was supported by a Yale University Graduate Fellowship. The research was also supported by National Institute of Mental Health Grant MH 14229 to Yale University. The authors would like to thank Jonathan Rogers of the Near Eastern Desk of Sterling Library for allowing the use of the library’s Hebrew typewriter. Arthur Samuel, James Pomerantz, Robert Abelson, Alvin Liberman, and Albert Smith provided helpful comments in various aspects of this work.
Portions of this research were presented at the 56th Annual Meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association, Boston, March 1985.
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Tetewsky, S.J., Garner, W.R. Perceptual learning: An analysis based on selective attention measurements. Bull. Psychon. Soc. 24, 375–378 (1986). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03330158
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03330158