Psy 416: Reasoning and
Problem Solving Fall 1998
Lecture 5: Concept Learning
and Induction
1. Induction and deduction—Two kinds
of knowledge (?), empirical and analytical
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Induction: Uncertain, Generalizations from experience, Predictions of
future experience. Induction is generally about trying to make sense out
of data. Often thought of as going from specific to general, or specific
to specific.
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Deduction: Certain, Conclusions from premises, Logical consequences
of arguments, mathematical derivations. Often thought of as going from
general statements to the specific events or statements or from general
statements to general statements.
2. Concepts or categories: Much of the research
on induction presumes the concept of "concept."
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A concept is usually, but not always, identified by a noun or noun phrase,
which is often thought to be definable by a set of properties.
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Properties (red, large, circle, alive, animal) are often operationalized
as values of dimensions, such as color, size, number, etc.
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Some concepts may be simple, such as, 'red things'; some may consist
of a conjunction of properties such as 'two red circles.' Sometimes a concept
may be defined "disjunctively" such as a strike in baseball. Sometimes
it's hard to identify the dimension to which a property belongs or to identify
the set of necessary and sufficient features that identify a concept.
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Sometimes the best we can do is to identify whether an example is an
exemplar of a concept probabalistically.
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Sometimes we may not be able to identify the dimensions or the features
that define a concept with accuracy.
3. Associationistic approaches to Concept
Formation (usually continuity)
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It is thought that concepts are learned primarily by being presented
with an exemplar and learning whether it is a member of a particular concept
or not. As the learner gets more and feedback from examples, she gets better
and better at knowing which examples are category members or concept exemplars
and which are notThese are seen to be values of some dimension.: dogs,
red things, grammatical sentences, planets, a strike in baseball—Simple
concepts, conjunctive concepts, disjunctive concepts.
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Hull’s Chinese character learning
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Kendler and transfer of training: reversal and nonreversal shifts.
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Frequency and probability of association are the primary principles
of category learning.
4. Spence result of a conditioning experiment.
Data supporting two kinds of processes. Are they continuity and discontinuity?
5. Hypothesis testing: Hypothetico-deductive
approaches to Concept formation (usually noncontinuity)
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minimal effects of early trials on categorization: random to very good
performance, non-efficacy of changing rule during learning phase.
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Bruner, Goodnow and Austin and strategies of concept attainment. Different
people use different strategies to try to identify the correct concepts.
These strategies are specific task related. Reception strategies (e.g.,
"Wholist" and "partist" ) and Selection strategies (e.g., "scanning" and
"focusing").
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Strategy: There is a tendency for people to focus on confirmation of
hypotheses and to pay attention to confirmatory rather than disconfirmatory
evidence, although they can learn make use of information of all types.
6. Rule Induction: Experimental investigation
of the consequences of operations: Finding functional relations between
experimental setups and results.
7. Judgment under uncertainty: Kahneman
and Tversky use of heuristics and their limitations.
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Availability
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similarity
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