Abstract
Ninety subjects were run under each of three conditions in a conjunctive concept identification experiment. For one problem, a subject was presented a repetition of the initial positive instance on the trial on which resampling would occur if the subject had not started with the correct hypothesis. For another problem, the subject was presented a new positive instance on that trial; and for a third problem, he was presented a negative instance on that trial. Hypothesis samples were assessed using blank trials following resampling. It was found that a repetition of the original positive instance and a negative instance resulted in about equal problem difficulty, while presentation of a new positive instance produced the best performance. Blank trial assessments corroborated the finding. It was concluded that memory for the initial focus was important in the resampling process.
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This investigation was supported in part by the U. S. Army Research Institute tor the Behavioral and Social Sciences, Grant DAHC 19-74-G-0007 to the first author.
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Nahinsky, I.D., Hollyfield, R.L. & Oeschger, D.E. Resampling of hypotheses after negative instances. Bull. Psychon. Soc. 6, 520–522 (1975). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03337556
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03337556