Research On The Indirect Learning Of Relational Category

Category learning is an important cognitive psychology research, in a sense, can be regarded as a type of learning program, the program quickly and effectively makes people find the dimensions of the object representation. It is the current focus of cognitive psychology.Relational category refers that identification of category depends on a common relation structure, both builds on the basis of similarity, and depends on the acquisition of theoretical knowledge. Previous research on category learning was mainly concerned about the "entity category", Researches on "relational category" relatively lack; existing researches of relational category learning are done by the direct learning paradigm, but indirect learning paradigm is a daily common way of learning, such as referential communication in cooperative activities; category learning includes many impact factors, some are from the human internal, such as selective attention. To explore the selective attention from the indirect learning of relational categories has important practical significance.This study explores the characteristics of indirect learning of relational categories. This study designs virtual alien pictures as stimuli, From 4 feature complex relation,6 features complex relation plus the second-order same functional simple relation to 6 features complex relation plus the second-order different functional simple relation, the levels of relational complexity of stimulus gradually increase. The creation of three experimental conditions:two types of indirect learning condition- individual category learning condition and the referencial communication condition, and a personal learning condition without function prediction. Three experimental tasks were designed- functional prediction task, free classification task and the dimension selection task, respectively, the study focuses on the characteristics of indirect learning of relational categories on the basis of the function prediction process, the result of classification and dimension choice.The results show that:1, In the indirect category learning conditions, subjects chose relations as category standards in the classification task.2, In the process of function prediction, compared to individual condition, the results in referential communication changed with the relational complexities of learning materials. and further found that this change was mainly reflected in the characteristics of referential convention formation. specifically, when the learning materials is 4 feature complex relational category, referential convention is easy to form, the score in the referential communication condition was significantly higher than that in individual condition; when the learning materials is relational category of 6 features complex relation plus the second-order same functional simple relation, referential convention is more difficult to form, the results between learning conditions were no significant difference; when the learning material is relational category of 6 features complex relation plus the second-order different functional simple relation, referential convention is the most difficult to form, the scores in individual condition was significantly higher than that in the referential communication condition.3, In the indirect category learning conditions, when the learning materials is 4 feature complex relational category, the result of Jaccard similarity in the referential communication condition was significantly higher than that in the individual condition; when the learning materials is the relational category of 6 features complex relation plus the second-order same functional simple relation or the relational category of 6 features complex relation plus the second-order different functional simple relation, there is no significant difference between learning conditions.4, In the indirect learning of different complexity relational categories, the selective attention level under the referential communication condition was significantly higher than that under the individual condition. This difference mainly appeared in the directivity of selective attention, and it did not appear in the concentration (inhibition of irrelevant dimensions). In the indirect learning of relational category, the selective attention levels were not significantly different with the relational complexity of learning materials gradually increasing. but the directivities of selective attention were significantly different and the concentrations of selective attention (inhibition of irrelevant dimensions) were not significantly different.5, In the indirect learning of relational category, there is not systemicity in the free classification task.