Teaching by Examples: Implications for the Process of Category Acquisition

Judith Avrahami*, Yaakov Kareev, Yonatan Bogot, Ruth Caspi, Salomka Dunaevsky, Sharon Lerner

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

45 Scopus citations

Abstract

A new paradigm, the "teaching-by-examples" paradigm, was used to shed new light on the process of category acquisition. In four experiments (n = 90, 90, 115, 117), manipulating the variables of category structure, status of non-target category, learning mode, and teaching mode, participants first learned a category and then taught it to someone else. High agreement between participants on the teaching sequences was found across conditions, and a typical sequence was identified for each category structure. The typical participant-produced sequences started with several ideal positive cases, followed by an ideal negative case and then borderline cases. The efficiency of such sequences for teaching was tested in another experiment (n = 60), in which they were compared with sequences emphasizing category borders and sequences emphasizing each dimension separately. The typical participant-produced sequences induced the most efficient learning. It is proposed that the pattern of performance may provide a rich source of data for testing and fine-tuning models of category acquisition.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)586-606
Number of pages21
JournalQuarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Section A: Human Experimental Psychology
Volume50
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - Aug 1997

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