UNSUPERVISED CONCEPT-LEARNING AND VALUE SYSTEMATICITY - A COMPLEX WHOLE AIDS LEARNING THE PARTS

Ease of learning new concepts may best be understood by simultaneously considering models of learning and theories of how ''good'' systems o f categories are organized. The authors tested the effects on learning of value systematicity, a proposed organizing principle: If 1 attribu te is predictive of another, it should predict still more. This princi ple derives from focused sampling in the internal feedback model (D. B illman & E. Heir, 1988) of unsupervised, or observational, learning. I n 3 experiments, the authors tested how the organization of structure in input (value systematicity) affected unsupervised learning of categ ories about alien animals. Across all experiments, learning a target r ule was easier in conditions with high value systematicity, relative t o several low systematicity controls. The authors compare results to p redictions of several learning models and consider the links between l earning and the resulting category structure.