Cue-Sampling Strategies and the Role of Verbal Hypotheses in Concept Identification

Abstract

<p> The role of verbal hypotheses in concept identification was explored by manipulating three variables affecting the relation between verbalized rules and classification performance. (i) Verbalizing rules before and after classification changed subjects' cue-sampling strategies and the control of verbal hypotheses over sorting performance. (ii) The difficulty of stimulus description affected how subjects utilized verbal hypotheses, and whether verbalized rules completely specified the cues used for classification. (iii) The number of irrelevant attributes changed the relative efficiency of stimulus-learning over rule-learning for concept identification.</p> <p> These investigations demonstrate effective techniques for varying and evaluating the importance of verbal rules for classification; and suggest that subjects' prior verbal habits markedly affect the degree of reliance placed on verbal hypotheses in concept attainment.</p>