Acquisition of acoustic pattern categories by exemplar observation

Abstract

Three experiments investigated how individuals learn to classify sequentially structured patterns of complex environmental sounds. In Experiment 1, listeners classified either auditory patterns or their visually presented symbolic analogues as targets or nontargets. Some individuals received “observation” trials on which they simply heard (saw) examples of the target patterns prior to classification. The observation trials were shown to be effective for target acquisition, and positive transfer occurred between symbolic observation and subsequent auditory pattern classification. The results of Experiments 2 and 3 suggested further that listeners may acquire a global attentional strategy during the observations and that the generalizability of observational learning will be limited when structurally ambiguous patterns are used. Post-experimental tests in Experiments 1 and 3 also suggested that individuals had learned something about the composition rules used to produce the target patterns rather than simple paired-associate responses. These findings have implications for pattern classification theory and for the design of performance aids for sonar technicians.