Learning categories at different hierarchical levels: a comparison of category learning models.
Three formal models of category learning, the rational model (Anderson, 1990), the configural-cue model (Gluck & Bower, 1988a), and ALCOVE (Kruschke, 1992), were evaluated on their ability to account for differential learning of hierarchically structured categories. An experiment using a theoretically challenging category structure developed by Lassaline, Wisniewski, and Medin (1992) is reported. Subjects learned one of two different category structures. For one structure, diagnostic information was present along a single dimension (1-D). For the other structure, diagnostic information was distributed across four dimensions (4-D). Subjects learned these categories at a general or at a specific level of abstraction. For the 1-D structure, specific-level categories were learned more rapidly than general-level categories. For the 4-D structure, the opposite result was observed. These results proved highly diagnostic for evaluating the models--although ALCOVE provided a good account of the observed results, the rational model and the configural-cue model did not.
Department of Psychology, 301 Wilson Hall, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37240, USA. thomas.j.palmeri@vanderbilt.edu
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D000704:Analysis of Variance; D002965:Classification; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning; D008960:Models, Psychological