Levels of learning involved in conjunctive and disjunctive concepts
Janet Seggie · Australian Journal of Psychology · 1969
4 groups of Ss learned conjunctive and disjunctive concepts under 2 conditions. The first condition required the classification of the stimuli into positive and negalive categories; the second required that they be classified into neutral categories. The conjunctive concept was significantly easier to learn only when the Ss were required to classify the stimuli in positive/negative terms. Under neutral conditions no difference existed between the 2 types of concept. A test was made of the prediction that Ss who learn disjunctive and neutral conjunctive concepts make more expirical use of the logical inverse to establish the consistency of the learned concepts. It was found that all Ss could correctly state the truth value of the inverse of the learned concepts. However, none of the Ss who learned the conjunctive concept in the positive/negative condition made use of the information available from the inverse, whereas Ss in all other conditions did.