The Effects Of Regulatory Fit On Rule-based And Information-integration Auditory Category Learning

Regulatory focus include promotion focus and prevention focus.Nurturance needs,Strong ideals and situations involving gain-nongain induce a promotion focus,where as security needs,strong oughts,and situations involving nonloss-loss induce a prevention focus.A promotion focus yields sensitivity to the presence or absence of positive outcomes and approach as strategic means,where as a prevention focus yields sensitivity to the absence or presence of negative outcomes and avoidance as strategic means.Higgins proposed that people experience a regulatory fit when they use goal pursuit means that fit their regulatory orientation,and this regulatory fit increases the value of what they are doing.Their research suggests that a regulatory fit between the situational regulatory focus and the reward structure of the task leads to a feeling of fluency and actually increases people's cognitive flexibility.Multiple-systems theory assumes that there are at least two independent classification systems based on different neural mechanisms:one is an explicit classification system,which depends on working memory and executive functions;the other is an implicit classification system that not dependent on working memory and executive function.Researchers often use rule-based category learning and information-integration category learning to study multiple-systems theory,the former being explicit learning and the latter being implicit learning.Research based on visual perception channel shows that working memory engage in the task will promote rule-based category learning,and will be harm to information-integration category learning in an indirect way.However,based on the auditory perception channel,research found that guiding the relevant dimensions will promote information-integration auditory category learning.In the study of visual category learning,researchers think that guiding relevant dimensions will increase the participation of working memory in tasks,thus damaging the information-integration category learning.This result is clearly contradictory to previous research.In order to explore whether the improvement in information-integration auditory category is due to the enhancement of working memory engage in the task,we used the characteristics of regulatory fit that increase cognitive flexibility,to explore the effects of engaging working memory on auditory category learning.There are 250 undergraduate college students take part in our experiment.In this experiment they must learn to divide the sounds they heard into two categories base on frequency and duration.There are two experiments in this study.Experiment 1 explores the effect of regulatory fit on two kids of auditory category learning under promotion focus.The results show that,when subjects take part in the rule-based auditory category learning,the correct rate is significant higher in regulatory fit condition than in regulatory not fit condition;but when subjects take part in the information-integration auditory category learning,the difference is not significant.Experiment 2 explores the effect of reward structures on two kinds of auditory category learning under prevention focus.The results show that,when subjects take part in the rule-based auditory category learning,the correct rate is significant lower in regulatory fit condition than regulatory not fit condition;but when subjects take part in the information-integration auditory category learning,the difference is not significant.Through this two experiments,we draw the following conclusions:(1)Under promotion focus condition,regulatory fit improve rule-based auditory category learning but not information-integration auditory category learning.(2)Under both conditions of promotion focus and prevention focus,the get-score structure is conductive to rule-based auditory category learning.(3)The regulatory fit has a significant impact on rule-based auditory category learning,but not on the information-integration auditory category learning.This research supports the hypothesis of multiple-systems theory from the perspective of auditory category learning.