Van Gulick Ana E, Gauthier Isabel
Department of Psychology, Vanderbilt University.
J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn. 2014 Sep;40(5):1307-20. doi: 10.1037/a0036822. Epub 2014 May 12.
In classic category learning studies, subjects typically learn to assign items to 1 of 2 categories, with no further distinction between how items on each side of the category boundary should be treated. In real life, however, we often learn categories that dictate further processing goals, for instance, with objects in only 1 category requiring further individuation. Using methods from category learning and perceptual expertise, we studied the perceptual consequences of experience with objects in tasks that rely on attention to different dimensions in different parts of the space. In 2 experiments, subjects first learned to categorize complex objects from a single morphspace into 2 categories based on 1 morph dimension, and then learned to perform a different task, either naming or a local feature judgment, for each of the 2 categories. A same-different discrimination test before and after each training measured sensitivity to feature dimensions of the space. After initial categorization, sensitivity increased along the category-diagnostic dimension. After task association, sensitivity increased more for the category that was named, especially along the nondiagnostic dimension. The results demonstrate that local attentional weights, associated with individual exemplars as a function of task requirements, can have lasting effects on perceptual representations.
在经典的类别学习研究中，受试者通常学习将物品分配到两个类别中的一个，而对于类别边界两侧的物品应如何处理不再做进一步区分。然而在现实生活中，我们常常学习那些规定了进一步处理目标的类别，例如，只有一个类别的物体需要进一步个体化。利用类别学习和感知专长的方法，我们研究了在依赖于对空间不同部分的不同维度进行关注的任务中，对物体的体验所产生的感知后果。在两项实验中，受试者首先学习根据一个形态维度将来自单个形态空间的复杂物体分类为两个类别，然后学习对这两个类别中的每一个执行不同的任务，要么命名要么进行局部特征判断。每次训练前后的异同辨别测试测量了对空间特征维度的敏感性。在初始分类之后，沿着类别诊断维度敏感性增加。在任务关联之后，对于被命名的类别，敏感性增加得更多，尤其是沿着非诊断维度。结果表明，与单个范例相关联的局部注意力权重作为任务要求的函数，可对感知表征产生持久影响。
