Effects of specific-level versus broad-level training for broad-level category learning in a complex natural science domain.

Abstract

Category learning is a core component of course curricula in science education. For instance, geology courses teach categorization of rock types. Using the educationally authentic rock categories, the current project examined whether category learning at a broad-level (BL; igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks) could be enhanced by learning category information at a more specific-level (SL; e.g., diorite under igneous, breccia under sedimentary, etc.). Experiments 1 and 2 showed that SL training was inferior to BL training when participants were required to respond at the BL regardless of whether BL and SL category labels were presented simultaneously during classification training or SL categories were learned initially followed by training on the specific-broad level name associations. However, Experiments 3 and 4 showed that SL training was as good as BL training when the training was more extensive and participants were allowed to respond at the trained level. By considering confusion matrices (i.e., probabilities that instances in a given category was erroneously classified as belonging to other categories), we conjectured that between-SL category similarity, specifically the degree to which similar-looking SL categories belong to the same BL category, is an important factor in determining the efficacy of SL training. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).