The Influence Of Massing And Simultaneity In Presentation On Different Levels Of Category Learning

Learning classification is not only necessary for survival,but also the basis for better understanding the world.Category learning is a process in which learners learn to classify through experience or practice.Category learning is influenced by both external and internal factors.As an external factor,presentation has an important influence on category learning.Previous studies have found that the promotion effect of simultaneous presentation has been proved in artificial categories,procedural knowledge,conceptual knowledge and other fields.However,the promotion effect of simultaneous presentation does not always exist.The influence of simultaneous presentation on learning natural categories is not clear.In addition,the previous studies on the massing and simultaneity of presentation only focused on the high-level category,lacking research on sub-level categories.However,many concepts often have different category levels in daily life.And the impact of presentation on the learning different category levels is not clear.Therefore,it is necessary to explore the influence of the massing and simultaneity of presentation on learning different category levels.Exploring the impact of presentation on different category levels is beneficial for broadening the research perspective of the applicable conditions of presentation methods,further validating the advantage effect of interleaved presentation on different category levels.It provides support for the Discriminative-Contrast hypothesis.In addition,when facing different category levels,teachers and students can clearly define the applicable conditions of presentation methods,choose appropriate teaching and learning methods to adapt to the development of teachers’ and students’ abilities,and further tap into their potential in education.This study designed two experiments in order to more comprehensively explore the impact of the massing and simultaneity of presentation on learning different category levels.Both experiments used college students as subjects and adopted the paradigm of observational learning.The experimental materials were adapted from the bird pictures of Wahlheim(Wahlheim,2011).In experiment 1,we examined the influence of the massing and simultaneity of presentation on learning the high-level category to test the Discriminative-Contrast hypothesis.Experiment 1 used birds of the high-level category(Warbler,Flycatcher,Jay and Thrush)as experimental materials.The experiment had a 2(massing of presentation: blocked presentation,interleaved presentation)x 2(simultaneity of presentation: sequential presentation,simultaneous presentation)between-subjects design.The experiment is divided into learning stage and testing stage.And the classification accuracy of the subjects in the testing stage is recorded.The results showed that:(1)No matter in the condition of sequential presentation or simultaneous presentation,interleaved presentation has better category learning performance than blocked presentation.(2)No matter in the condition of blocked presentation or interleaved presentation,the category learning performance of simultaneous presentation is better than that of sequential presentation.Experiments 2 examined the effect of the massing and simultaneity of presentation on learning the sub-level categories.The experiment 2 used birds of the sub-level category(Wren,Spinfex bird,Reed warbler and Willow warbler)as experimental materials.The experiment had a 2(massing of presentation: blocked presentation,interleaved presentation)x 2(simultaneity of presentation: sequential presentation,simultaneous presentation)between-subjects design.The results showed that:(1)No matter in the condition of sequential presentation or simultaneous presentation,interleaved presentation has better category learning performance than blocked presentation.(2)No matter in the condition of blocked presentation or interleaved presentation,there is no significant difference between the classification learning performance of simultaneous presentation and sequential presentation.(3)Among the four ways of presentation,the interleaved-simultaneously presentation has the best performance of classification learning,and the blocked-simultaneously presentation has the worst performance of classification learning.This study draws the following conclusions:(1)The massing of presentation has the same impact on learning different category levels.For the high-level and sub-level categories,no matter in the condition of sequential presentation or simultaneous presentation,the interleaved presentation has better performance of category learning than that of the blocked presentation,which supports the Discriminative-Contrast hypothesis.(2)The simultaneity of presentation has different impact on learning different category levels.For the high-level categories,no matter in the condition of blocked presentation or interleaved presentation,the category learning performance of simultaneous presentation is better than that of sequential presentation.And the category learning performance of blocked-simultaneously presentation is better than that of interleaved-sequential presentation.However,for the sub-level categories,no matter under the condition of blocked presentation or interleaved presentation,there is no significant difference between the category learning performance of simultaneous presentation and sequential presentation.Among the four ways of presentation,the category learning performance of interleaved-simultaneously presentation is the best,and the category learning performance of blocked-simultaneously presentation is the worst.