Rabi Rahel, Minda John Paul
Cognition and Perception Program, Department of Psychology, The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada.
PLoS One. 2014 Jan 29;9(1):e85316. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0085316. eCollection 2014.
Rule-based category learning was examined in 4-11 year-olds and adults. Participants were asked to learn a set of novel perceptual categories in a classification learning task. Categorization performance improved with age, with younger children showing the strongest rule-based deficit relative to older children and adults. Model-based analyses provided insight regarding the type of strategy being used to solve the categorization task, demonstrating that the use of the task appropriate strategy increased with age. When children and adults who identified the correct categorization rule were compared, the performance deficit was no longer evident. Executive functions were also measured. While both working memory and inhibitory control were related to rule-based categorization and improved with age, working memory specifically was found to marginally mediate the age-related improvements in categorization. When analyses focused only on the sample of children, results showed that working memory ability and inhibitory control were associated with categorization performance and strategy use. The current findings track changes in categorization performance across childhood, demonstrating at which points performance begins to mature and resemble that of adults. Additionally, findings highlight the potential role that working memory and inhibitory control may play in rule-based category learning.
在4至11岁儿童和成年人中对基于规则的类别学习进行了研究。参与者被要求在分类学习任务中学习一组新的感知类别。分类表现随着年龄增长而提高，相对于年龄较大的儿童和成年人，年幼儿童表现出最强的基于规则的缺陷。基于模型的分析提供了关于用于解决分类任务的策略类型的见解，表明使用与任务相适应的策略随着年龄增长而增加。当比较识别出正确分类规则的儿童和成年人时，表现缺陷不再明显。还对执行功能进行了测量。虽然工作记忆和抑制控制都与基于规则的分类有关且随着年龄增长而改善，但具体发现工作记忆在一定程度上介导了分类中与年龄相关的改善。当分析仅集中在儿童样本上时，结果表明工作记忆能力和抑制控制与分类表现及策略使用相关。当前研究结果追踪了整个儿童期分类表现的变化，表明表现开始成熟并类似于成年人的时间点。此外，研究结果突出了工作记忆和抑制控制在基于规则的类别学习中可能发挥的潜在作用。
