The Role of Explanation in Discovery and Generalization: Evidence From Category Learning
Cognitive Science 34 (5):776-806 (2010)
| Abstract | Research in education and cognitive development suggests that explaining plays a key role in learning and generalization: When learners provide explanations—even to themselves—they learn more effectively and generalize more readily to novel situations. This paper proposes and tests a subsumptive constraints account of this effect. Motivated by philosophical theories of explanation, this account predicts that explaining guides learners to interpret what they are learning in terms of unifying patterns or regularities, which promotes the discovery of broad generalizations. Three experiments provide evidence for the subsumptive constraints account: prompting participants to explain while learning artificial categories promotes the induction of a broad generalization underlying category membership, relative to describing items (Exp. 1), thinking aloud (Exp. 2), or free study (Exp. 3). Although explaining facilitates discovery, Experiment 1 finds that description is more beneficial for learning item details. Experiment 2 additionally suggests that explaining anomalous observations may play a special role in belief revision. The findings provide insight into explanation’s role in discovery and generalization | |||||||||
| Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,653 |
| External links |
 |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesLakshmi J. Gogate (2001). Don't Preverbal Infants Map Words Onto Referents? Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (6):1106-1107.
M. Gareth Gaskell (1997). Type-2 Problems Are Difficult to Learn, but Generalize Well (in General). Behavioral and Brain Sciences 20 (1):73-73.
John E. Hummel (2010). Symbolic Versus Associative Learning. Cognitive Science 34 (6):958-965.
G. B. Robinson (1997). Learning and Synaptic Plasticity. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 20 (4):628-628.
David Henderson (2005). Norms, Invariance, and Explanatory Relevance. Philosophy of the Social Sciences 35 (3):324-338.
Alexander Bird (2006). Selection and Explanation. In Alexander Bird (ed.), Rethinking Explanation.
York Hagmayer, Björn Meder, Momme von Sydow & Michael R. Waldmann (2011). Category Transfer in Sequential Causal Learning: The Unbroken Mechanism Hypothesis. Cognitive Science 35 (5):842-873.
Aldo Zanga & Jean-Fran (2004). Implicit Learning in Rule Induction and Problem Solving. Thinking and Reasoning 10 (1):55 – 83.
Noretta Koertge (1982). Explaining Scientific Discovery. PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1982:14 - 28.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2010-08-11Total downloads7 ( #133,343 of 548,984 )Recent downloads (6 months)1 ( #63,327 of 548,984 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
