Feedback interference and dissociations of classification: evidence against the multiple-learning-systems hypothesis.
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-to-discriminate 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.
Stanton
Roger D
RD
Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana 47405, USA.
Nosofsky
Robert M
RM
D001244:Association; D003071:Cognition; D005246:Feedback; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning; D011582:Psychological Theory