Journal
PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE
Volume 16, Issue 2, Pages 145-151Publisher
BLACKWELL PUBLISHERS
DOI: 10.1111/j.0956-7976.2005.00795.x
Keywords
-
Categories
Funding
- NEI NIH HHS [1 R01 EY014681-01] Funding Source: Medline
- NICHD NIH HHS [U01 HD045023-01] Funding Source: Medline
- NIMH NIH HHS [MH64812] Funding Source: Medline
Ask authors/readers for more resources
A hallmark of perceptual expertise is that experts classify objects at a more specific, subordinate level of abstraction than novices. To what extent does subordinate-level learning contribute to the transfer of perceptual expertise to novel exemplars and novel categories? In this study, participants learned to classify 10 varieties of wading birds and 10 varieties of owls at either the subordinate, species (e.g., great blue crown heron,eastern screech owl) or the family (wading bird,owl) level of abstraction. During training, the amount of visual exposure was equated such that participants received an equal number of learning trials for wading birds and owls. Pre- and posttraining performance was measured in a same/different discrimination task in which participants judged whether pairs of bird stimuli belonged to the same or different species. Participants trained in species-level discrimination demonstrated greater transfer to novel exemplars and novel species categories than participants trained in family-level discrimination. These findings suggest that perceptual categorization, not perceptual exposure per se, is important for the development and generalization of visual expertise.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available