ASSESSMENTS OF COMPLEX CONCEPTUAL KNOWLEDGE DETERMINED BY ANALYTIC AND INTUITIVE PROCESSES: SEPARATION OF THE EFFECTS OF ACQUISITION AND CLASSIFICATION STRATEGIES

Conceptual knowledge may appear in two forms: articulate and tacit. For concepts established in the form of articulate knowledge, we are able to verbalize what we know. In contrast, tacit knowledge can be demonstrated only in behaviors that involve the application of this knowledge without its verbal formulation. The difficulty of expression inherent in tacit knowledge, making it less tractable than articulate knowledge, has resulted, until recently, in its neglect by empirical research.; Currently, a number of investigations have focused on the establishment of tacit knowledge of synthetic concepts possessing complex internal structures. These artificial concepts are offered as analogues to natural language concepts and, in some instances, to the syntactic structures of linguistic theory. Whereas earlier experimental paradigms clearly reflected the assumption that an intuitive, perceptual learning approach was the most appropriate for acquiring such complex concepts, current investigators, incorporating learning strategy as a variable into their research designs, are now beginning to examine this assumption. They report that a learning strategy oriented toward articulation of rules and hypotheses concerning the structure of a concept (an analytic strategy) has a detrimental effect on the establishment of complex conceptual knowledge.; The present research probes this conclusion. In addition to learning strategy as a variable, strategies for the use of complex conceptual knowledge in the classification of novel instances (response strategies) are also manipulated.; Separation of learning and response strategies is important because the two have been confounded in the preceding work. Specifically, responses based on articulate formulations are likely to accompany an analytic learning strategy whereas responses determined by intuition accompany an intuitive learning strategy. This research attempts to isolate these strategies and to examine, individually, their impact on performance measures of complex conceptual knowledge.; In the first experiment, eighty-four participants, in four experimental groups observed a number of related, rule-governed visual patterns. The four treatment conditions were formed by crossing learning strategy (analytic vs. intuitive), manipulated through instructions, with order for the presentation of stimuli during the acquisition phase (random vs. clustered-organized by common structural components). Performance on a recognition test revealed that all groups had both individual items memory and knowledge of the system concept. The learning strategy variable was not associated with performance differences. For the presentation order variable, the cluster condition developed in the participants a more precise system concept than did the random condition.; In the second experiment, learning strategy (analytic vs. intuitive) and response strategy (use of articulate {lcub}analytic strategy{rcub} vs. tacit {lcub}intuitive strategy{rcub} formulations of the concept), manipulated by instructions, were crossed to yield four experimental groups. These participants (109, in all) observed instances of the same concept employed in the first experiment. In performance measures requiring the evaluation of new patterns as members of the system concept, all experimental conditions demonstrated substantial knowledge for the system concept. In addition, the response strategy, but not the learning strategy, was reliably related to performance differences; the intuitive response strategy promoted significantly greater demonstrations of knowledge of the system concept than the analytic response strategy. This finding indicates that response strategy is an important influence on performance measures of complex conceptual knowledge. Caution is advised when designing performance measures of complex conceptual knowledge in order to avoid confounding learning strategy with response strategy in future research.