2017年第二届曲阜视觉科学会议知识库

PURPOSE: The present study aims to investigate whether both A/B and A/not A tasks of prototype category learning include declarative memory.
METHODS: To address this issue, cartoon animals varied along 10 binary dimensions were adopted as stimuli, and participants were asked to complete either an A/B task or an A/not A task in either the single condition or the dual condition. For the A/B task, participants were asked to indicate which category the stimulus belonged to, and then the feedback of the correctness was provided during training. The test phase was the same as training except there was no feedback. For the A/not A task, participants were asked to indicate how likable the stimulus was, and then the feedback of the likeability rated by others was provided during training. In the test phase, participants were asked to indicate whether the stimulus belonged to the category they saw before. In the dual condition, participants were asked to complete the categorization task and the additional Sternberg memory scanning task. On each trial, they were asked to memorize 4 digits before categorization, and then recognized them after categorization.
RESULTS: The results showed that the accuracy was significantly higher than chance for both tasks in either the single or the dual condition and the accuracy was significantly higher in the single condition than in the dual condition for both tasks. That is, although the secondary working memory task reduced performance in the two tasks of prototype category learning, but it could not eliminate category leaning in both tasks.
CONCLUSIONS: The results indicated that declarative memory might be involved in prototype category learning, but it does not play a crucial role in prototype category learning.