Research On The Influence Of Study Material Structure On Category Representation Strategy

Category learning is the cognitive process by which individuals learn to place stimulus into two or more group. It is not only one of central issues of human intelligence activity, but also the basic element composing more complex cognitive task, thus, the specific cognitive processes associated with categorization have been studied extensively by cognitive psychologists, and there are different opinion on which represent strategy are used in category learning. Early theories of categorization assumed that either rules, or prototypes, or exemplars were exclusively used to mentally represent categories of object. More recently, various hybrid theories have been proposed that involve mixtures of rules and exemplars, prototypes and exemplars. They are supported by experimental research, and complex formal models have been established. However, up to now, no one recognized theory provides a better account of different experiment data.The paper reviewed previous experiment, and observed the experiment material have difference. Accordingly, it assumes that difference of experiment material lead to difference of represent strategy of categorization. Based on this assumption, various formal models are demonstrated. The present paper categorizes the study materials by three aspects of category organization: stimulus dimensionality, dimension feature diagnosticity, category size, then, three experiments are conducted to examine whether or not different character of material can induce different category representation, and asks which categorization tasks foster one kind of strategy.To summarize, across three experiments, we provide three conclusions are obtained as follows. First, it demonstrated that the variation of categorization task could lead to different kinds of representation in category, thus, resulting in different grade. Second, our results are consistent with the hypothesis that there is representational shift during category learning. Early in learning, subjects always prefer use rule-based represent strategy, only when this strategy cannot reach his expectation can subjects reconsider other strategy. Therefore, later in learning, whencategory structure is poor-defined, the frequency of rule formation used is lower than other two strategies. Finally, in category learning, the use of strategy follow rational economical principle, subjects always selects the strategy that needs minimum brain resource whenever the results is satisfied.