ERIC Number: EJ1055896
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2013-May
Pages: 11
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0278-7393
EISSN: N/A
Development, Awareness and Inductive Selectivity
Hayes, Brett K.; Lim, Melissa
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, v39 n3 p821-831 May 2013
Two studies examined whether adults and children could learn to make context-dependent inferences about novel stimuli and the role of awareness of context cues in such learning. Participants were trained to match probes to targets on the basis of shape or color with the relevant dimension shifting according to item context. A selective induction test then examined context-dependent responding in a more complex matching task. Awareness of the role of context was assessed using a behavioral task and explicit questions. Experiment 1 showed that after training with the procedure described by Sloutsky and Fisher (2008), only a minority of adults showed evidence of context-dependent responding in the selective induction test. Experiment 2 used a modified training protocol that promoted attention to context cues. This led to reliable selective induction in a majority of adults and a sizeable proportion of 4- to 6-year-olds. Crucially, in both age groups, selective induction was dependent on awareness of context. Hence, children as young as 4 can learn to make selective inferences about novel stimuli, but only when they are aware of the relevant context cues. These results challenge previous claims that selective induction in children is the product of implicit learning.
Descriptors: Foreign Countries, Inferences, Logical Thinking, Thinking Skills, Adults, Experiments, Context Effect, Cues, Visual Stimuli, Classification, Cognitive Ability, Cognitive Processes, Undergraduate Students, Children
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Australia
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A