Comparing Models of Function Learning

描述(由申请人提供)：人类的概念是复杂的、多种多样的，并有多种用途。使用概念的一种方法是对人或事物进行分类，并从类别成员关系中推断属性。从历史上看，这种概念观点一直主导着认知心理学的理论和经验文献。但这种观点过于严格，另一种使用概念的重要方式是在连续函数关系的基础上从原因的强度到结果的大小进行预测。拟议研究的总体目的是为更正式、系统和综合的功能学习方法提供基础，这种方法与类别学习的现有进展平行。具体地说，我们的目标是实现以下三个具体目标。首先，我们计划在仅包括单输入单输出函数的受限域中严格测试基于规则和联想的函数学习模型。我们的第二线研究涉及这样一种可能性，即个体在功能学习中观察到的规则抽象和基于样本的过程表明，一种一般的学习取向，为一系列更高顺序的认知任务产生了特有的学习结果。在我们的第三个主要焦点中，我们通过操纵在函数学习过程中作为反馈提供的回报类型来检查学习和决策之间的相互关系。这最后一条研究旨在测试几乎所有连接主义学习方法背后的基本学习机制。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Human concepts are complex, varied, and serve myriad purposes. One way concepts are used is to categorize people or things and infer properties from category membership. Historically, this view of concepts has dominated the theoretical and empirical literature in cognitive psychology. But this view is too restrictive and another important way concepts are used is to make predictions from strengths of causes to magnitudes of effects on the basis of continuous functional relationships. The general purpose of the proposed research is to provide the foundations for a more formal, systematic, and integrative approach to function learning that parallels the existing progress in category learning. More specifically, we aim to achieve the following three specific goals. First, we plan to rigorously test rule versus associative based models of function learning in a restricted domain that includes only single input - single output functions. Our second line of research addresses the possibility that the rule-abstraction and exemplar-based processes that are observed by individuals in function learning indicate a general learning orientation that produces characteristic learning outcomes for a host of higher-order cognitive tasks. In our third major focus, we examine the interrelations between learning and decision-making by manipulating the type of payoffs provided as feedback during function learning. This last line of research is designed to test the basic learning mechanisms underlying almost all connectionist-learning approaches.