Concept learning

Draft

Definitions

“Psychologists use the term concept formation, or concept learning, to refer to the development of the ability to respond to common features of categories of objects or events. Concepts are mental categories for objects, events, or ideas that have a common set of features” (Exploring Psychology retrieved, 17:17, 15 September 2006 (MEST))

Concept learning encompasses learning how to discriminate and categorize things (with critical attributes). It also involves recall of instances, integration of new examples and sub-categorization. Concept formation is not related to simple recall, it must be constructed.

A short history of models

Earlier models were based on behaviorist theory. “Stimulus-response association theory was proposed by Clark Hull (1920). He argued that we learn to associate a particular response (the concept) with a variety of stimuli that define the concept.”(Exploring Psychology)

Jerome Bruner formulated a concept formation theory that involved cognitive processes, i.e. hypothesis testing about a concept by making guesses about which attributes are essential for defining the concept.

Merrill & Tennison (1977), based on component display theory argued that concept formation focuses on attributes and examples. As instructional designers the goal of this model was to reduce overgeneralization, undergeneralization and misconception.

Eleanor Rosch (1978) suggested that the natural concepts in everyday life are learned through examples rather than abstract rules.

Anderson's Adaptive Control of Thought (ACT) theory suggests that long-term memory is an interconnect network of propositions (facts of concepts). Only a subset of interconnected propositions can be activated and more connected propositions are easier to retrieve. A concept that has many connections is elaborated.

“Tennyson & Cocchiarella (1986) suggest a model for concept teaching that has three stages: (1) establishing a connection in memory between the concept to be learned and existing knowledge, (2) improving the formation of concepts in terms of relations, and (3) facilitating the development of classification rules. This model acknowledges the declarative and procedural aspects of cognition.” (TIP -Concepts, retrieved, 17:17, 15 September 2006 (MEST))

“The prototype theory is described by Laurence and Margolis as follows: "Most concepts-including most lexical concepts-are complex representations whose structure encodes a statistical analysis of the properties their members tend to have" (p. 27). Concepts can be thought of, not as a list, but as a distribution of properties, some more central or typical than others. The prototype is an abstraction of the central properties and need not correspond to any example.” (Palmer, 2002: 600).

“Klausmeier (1974) suggests four levels of concept learning: (1) concrete - recall of critical attributes, (2) identity - recall of examples, (3) classification - generalizing to new examples, and (4) formalization - discriminating new instances.” (TIP - Concepts, retrieved, 17:17, 15 September 2006 (MEST))

“Typically in cognitive psychology, categorization is regarded as a process of determining what things belong together, and a category is a group or class of stimuli or events that so cohere. A concept is thought to be knowledge that facilitates the categorization process (e.g., Barsalou, 1991, 1992).” (Zentall et al, 2002:237).

Types of concepts

Perceptual concepts

From a behaviorist stance: The classes of stimuli that are united in perceptual concepts may be said, from a subject's perspective, to bear physical similarity to one another. (Zentall et al, 2002).

Relational concepts

From a behaviorist stance: Relational concept learning makes use of more abstract properties of the stimuli. (Zentall et al, 2002).

Associated concepts

From a behaviorist stance: In associative concept learning, the stimuli within classes bear no obvious physical similarity to one another, but rather cohere because of shared functional properties. (Zentall et al, 2002).

See also: concept maps.

Complex concepts

Complex concepts are constructs like schemas and scripts. Schemas can be described through lists of smaller concepts (features) and through associations of concepts. Scripts include actions one has to undertake (including variants).

See also human information processing.

Concept teaching

For many behaviorist instructional designers, concept learning measured by learner's classification behavior. Beginners can only identify similar examples, wheras more advanced learners (for a given subject) are able to transfer classification to a very different set of stimuli.

However, learning of complex concepts involves more that discrimation and transfer and may engage problem-solving processes. E.g. what Gagné calls "defined concepts" (such as "symmetry" as opposed to "circle" or "transport" as opposed to "horse" or "going out for food" as opposed to "eating an apple") do require more processing.

Links

• Wikipedia Concept Learning

• TIP - Concepts

• Exploring Psychology

References

• Hall, R.H., Sidio-Hall, M.A., & Saling, C.B. (1995). Alternative materials for learning: Cognitive and affective outcomes of learning from knowledge maps. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco.

• Margolis, E., & Laurence, S. (1999). Concepts: Core readings. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

• Merrill, M.D. & Tennyson, R.D. (1977). Concept Teaching: An Instructional Design Guide. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Educational Technology.

• Najjar, Lawrence, J. (1996). The Effects of Multimedia and Elaborative Encoding on Learning, Georgia Institute of Technology, Technical Report GIT-GVU-96-05. PDF

• Paivio, A. (1986). Mental Representations: A Dual Coding Approach. New York: Oxford University Press.

• Rosch, E. & Lloyd, B. (1978). Cognition and Categorization. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

• Spoehr, K.T. (1994). Enhancing the acquisition of conceptual structures through hypermedia. In: Kate McGilly (Ed.), Classroom lessons: Integrating cognitive theory and classroom practice. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

• Zentall Thomas R , Mark Galizio, and Thomas S Critchfied (2002), Categorization, concept learning, and behavior analysis: an introduction, J Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 78(3): 237-248., doi:10.1901/jeab.2002.78-237.

• Palmer, David C., (2002) Psychological Essentialism: A Review Of E. Margolis And S. Laurence (Eds.), Concepts: Core Readings. J Exp Anal Behav. 2002 November; 78(3): 597-607. doi: 10.1901/jeab.2002.78-597.
• PDF

• Rowe, Bobby L., Theoretical Contexts for Concept Learning in Art Education, Studies in Art Education, Vol. 16, No. 1. (1974 - 1975), pp. 18-25.

• Vosniadou, S., & Brewer, W.F. (1987). Theories of knowledge restructuring in development. Review of Educational Research, 57, 51-67.