Relationship of the post-feedback interval to concept difficulty and methods of learning
Janet Seggie · Australian Journal of Psychology · 1971
Eighteen groups of Ss learned a concept in a 3 × 3 × 2 factorial design with the variables (a) PIF interval: 2, 8 or 15 secs; (b) Learning Method: complete learning (CL), rule learning (RL) or search procedure (SP); (c) Concept: conjunctive or conditional. The results indicated that both the relative difficulty of the concepts and the effect of the PIF intervals were functions of the learning method. The conditional was more difficult than the conjunctive under CL; under RL the relative difficulty was reduced; under SP the Ss achieved parity of performance on the two concepts. Longer PIF intervals were equally effective to the learning of both concepts under CL; they affected only the conditional under RL, and were not effective under SP. In addition to these issues a method was developed to explore the extent to which Ss learn the relationships between individual stimuli and classification. More conditional concept learners learned these relationships than conjunctive and there was evidence of a perceptual approach to concept learning. This was more prevalent among conjunctive concept learners.