The Tendentiousness Of Learning Strategy In The Category Learning

Category learning is a process that learners learn how to classify correctly after some practice. It is one of the hot research fields of cognitive psychology. There are mainly two learning strategies in category learning:rule-based categorization strategy and similarity-based categorization strategy. The category structure is the one of the important factors that influences categorization strategy. The multiple systems theory of category learning maintains that people will use the rule-based categorization strategy in rule-based category structure and use information-integration categorization strategy in information-integration category structure. The information-integration categorization strategy is actually also the similarity-based categorization strategy. However, seeing from previous studies, learners use the rule-based categorization strategy in the rule-based category structure but learners rarely use the similarity-based categorization strategy in the information-integration, most of whom use the rules to classify the tasks.This research attempted to explore the tendentiousness of learning strategy in the category learning through rigorous research design. This research was composed of two studys. The first study, through ingenious design, attempted to explore whether people tended to use rule-based categorization strategy to classify the tasks when both rule-based categorization strategy and similarity-based categorization strategy could be used. The second one explored the tendentiousness of learning strategy when the "category structure was unequal". That was to say similarity categorization strategy was the perfect categorization strategy but the one dimension rule-based categorization strategy was not the perfect categorization strategy. The second study also tried to find whether people also tend to use rule-based categorization strategy in that situation. The second study also investigated the changing characteristics of learning strategies on the whole learning process; further analyzing and explaining the tendentiousness of learning strategy in the category learning. The research got the following results:(1) The subjects would use the rule-based categorization strategy when the category structure could be used both with rule-based categorization strategy and similarity-based categorization strategy ("category structure equal"). Rule-based categorization strategy was chosen first in category learning.(2) In the "category structure equal" learning conditions, learners could learn the similar features within categories along with the further study, but the learners didn’t try to use similarity-based categorization strategy and still used the rule-based categorization strategy. That was to say the learners used the "mastering the rules-stoppting searching" strategy.(3) The learners tended to use one dimension rule-based categorization strategy or rule-plus-exception categorization strategy when rule-based categorization strategy was not the perfect categorization strategy while similarity categorization strategy was the perfect categorization strategy ("category structure unequal" learning conditions).(4) In the "category structure unequal" learning conditions, various learners would show some differences when using the learning strategies in the process of the category learning. But learners tended to use rule-based categorization strategy in the early stage of learning regardless of it was single dimension rule-based categorization strategy, rule-plus-exception categorization strategy or similarity categorization strategy. Rule-based categorization strategy was chosen first in category learning.(5) The strategies used by the learners of the rule-based categorization group and the learners of the similarity categorization group showed different characters in the different stages of category learning. The learners of rule-based categorization strategy group started to find rules and persisted in using it. The learners used the "mastering the rules-stoppting searching" strategy; The learners of similarity categorization strategy group first found rules and later they would change the learning strategy along with the study. They changed rule-based categorization strategy to similarity categorization strategy. The learners used the "not masterting the rule-conversion" strategy.(6) The learners all first used the rule-based categorization strategy whether it was in the "category structure equal" learning conditions or in the "category structure unequal" learning conditions. The rules tendentiousness principle commonly existed in category learning.