Alignability and Prior Knowledge in Category Learning

This thesis is concerned with the roles of structural alignment and prior knowledge in category learning. Structural alignment (Gentner, 1983, 1989) is a theory that claims that similarity comparisons entail a process of aligning the components of the things being compared, determining what corresponds to what. The experiments presented here explore the implications of this view of similarity for category learning. Many theories of category leaning (e.g., Medin & Schaffer, 1978) argue that categories are easy to learn to the extent that they have low between-category similarity and high within-category similarity. Experiments 1 and 1a assessed the within- and between-category similarity characteristics for pairs of alignable and nonalignable categories. Experiment 2 then compared the learning of these two category types. A dissociation between similarity and categorization was observed whereby alignable categories were easier to learn than nonalignable categories despite having an identical similarity profile. Experiment 3 expanded on this result by showing an alignability advantage for categories that contained both alignable and nonalignable features, but in which only one of these kinds of features was predictive of category membership. Experiments 4 and 5 began to explore whether alignability helps category learning when the categories can be related to prior knowledge. The results suggested that alignable features and features related to prior knowledge may compete for attention in category learning. The General Discussion proposes that alignability effects may be due to increased attention allocated to alignable over nonalignable features.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Psychology

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2015

Author dc:creator

• Kaplan, Audrey Susan

Contributors dc:contributor

• Murphy, Gregory L.

• Psychology, Experimental

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

(MiAaPQ)AAI9953059

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/82289