Evidence for rule versus exemplar learning strategies as stable individual differences independent from working memory.

Evidence for two qualitatively different learning strategies has emerged from the function- and category-learning literatures: a rule-based and an exemplar-based strategy. With a rule-based strategy, learners abstract some common principle from training items, which allows extrapolation to novel ins...

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Publicado en:Memory & Cognition Vol. 54; no. 1; pp. 311 - 335
Autores principales: Herzog, Samuel A., Goldwater, Micah B.
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Springer Nature Jan2026
Materias:
Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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        atl: Evidence for rule versus exemplar learning strategies as stable individual differences independent from working memory.
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        au:
          Herzog, Samuel A.
          Goldwater, Micah B.
        affil: https://ror.org/0384j8v12 School of Psychology, The University of Sydney, 2006, Sydney, NSW, Australia
      su:
        Self-evaluation
        Task performance
        Individuality
        Pearson correlation (Statistics)
        Statistical correlation
        Scale analysis (Psychology)
        Cognitive testing
        Prompts (Psychology)
        Research evaluation
        Structural equation modeling
        Descriptive statistics
        Statistical reliability
        Research
        Learning strategies
        Short-term memory
        Data analysis software
        Factor analysis
      sug:
        subj:
          Self-evaluation
          Task performance
          Individuality
          Pearson correlation (Statistics)
          Statistical correlation
          Scale analysis (Psychology)
          Cognitive testing
          Prompts (Psychology)
          Research evaluation
          Structural equation modeling
          Descriptive statistics
          Statistical reliability
          Research
          Learning strategies
          Short-term memory
          Data analysis software
          Factor analysis
      keyword:
        Concept learning and transfer
        Exemplar learning
        Individual differences in concept learning
        Psychology and Cognitive Sciences Psychology
        Rule abstraction
        Concept learning and transfer
        Exemplar learning
        Individual differences in concept learning
        Psychology and Cognitive Sciences Psychology
        Rule abstraction
      ab: Evidence for two qualitatively different learning strategies has emerged from the function- and category-learning literatures: a rule-based and an exemplar-based strategy. With a rule-based strategy, learners abstract some common principle from training items, which allows extrapolation to novel instances. With an exemplar-based strategy, learners encode training items without abstraction, which facilitates generalisation based on surface similarity to trained items. Previous studies offer preliminary evidence that strategies are stable; that is, convergent performance was found across pairs of disparate tasks. The current paper advances this work by examining whether performance across a battery of tasks converges, providing evidence for a latent variable underlying learning strategy. Subjects completed five learning strategy and three working memory tasks. Using data reduction and latent structure modelling methods, we found evidence for a general strategy construct that was unrelated to working memory. This is important because it shows that differences in learning strategy are not simply due to differences in working memory.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype: Article
      src: R
    language: English
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