title: Learning and extrapolating a periodic function.
abstract: How people learn continuous functional relationships remains a poorly understood capacity. In this article, I argue that the mere presence of nonmonotonic extrapolation of periodic functions neither threatens existing theories of function learning nor distinguishes between them. However, I show that merely learning periodic functions is extremely difficult. It is only when stimuli are presented numerically, rather than as numberless quantities, that participants learn anything like a periodic function. In addition, I show that even then, people do not regularly extrapolate periodically. The lesson is that careful methodologies will be required to understand a psychological capacity that is as idiosyncratic as the learning of complex functions appears to be.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Cognitive Science, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Lafayette, LA 70504-3772, USA. kalish@louisiana.edu
authors.forename: Michael L
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: Kalish
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D006801:Humans; D007206:Individuality; D007858:Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D010507:Periodicity; D014163:Transfer, Psychology; D055815:Young Adult