An Experimental Research On Children Acquiring Disjunctive Category By The Approaches Of Implicit Learning And Componential Analysis

The concept of reflective abstraction plays a very important role in the Piaget's genetic episteraology. It is viewed as the individual genetic mechanism of logico-mathematical knowledge that forms the general aspect of human knowledge. In Piaget's theory, however, there is little elaborate description of the process of reflective abstraction, which results in the difficulties of deeply understanding the formation of logico-mathematic knowledge and applying Piaget's theory in educational practice. In order to develop Piaget's theory and increase it's instruction to the educational practice, we conducted this experimental research.Based on the elementary ideas of category in the genetic epistemology, we used the approaches of implicit learning and componential analysis in modern cognitive psychology to explore the process of 7, 8-year-old children who lies in the transition from Piaget's pre-operational thinking to concrete operational thinking, acquiring disjunctive categories in the experimental research. The experimental results included: (1) in the test carried out immediately after the end of learning, implicit learning group had significantly better performance than explicit learning group; In other words, there is an implicit learning effect; (2) in the transfer test carried out a month after the end of learning, implicit learning group also had significantly better performance in the measures of correct rate and response time than explicit learning group and control group. These results implied that implicit learning seemed to play a more important role in children acquiring disjunctive categories, rather than explicit learning.According to the results of this research and other related research, the author proposes: (1) implicit learning and reflective abstraction, especially unconscious reflective abstraction, seem to be two different descriptions of the same psychological mechanism. Therefore, it is a sound approach to develop the research of reflective abstraction by the approach of implicit learning; (2) it is impossible and sound to richen Piaget's theory by using the methods of modern cognitive psychology.