Knowledge partitioning in categorization: Boundary conditions

Stephan Lewandowsky*, Leo Roberts, Lee-Xieng Yang

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticle (Academic Journal)peer-review

31 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Knowledge partitioning refers to the notion that knowledge can be held in independent and non-overlapping parcels. Partitioned knowledge may cause people to make contradictory decisions for identical problems in different circumstances. We report two experiments that explored the boundary conditions of knowledge partitioning in categorization. The studies examined whether or not people would partition their knowledge (1) when categorization rales were or were not verbalizable and (2) when the to-be-categorized stimuli comprised perceptually separable or integral dimensions. When learning difficulty was controlled, partitioning occurred across all combinations of verbalizability and integrality/separability, underscoring the generality of knowledge partitioning. Partitioning was absent only when the task was rapidly learned and people reached a high level of proficiency, suggesting that task difficulty plays a critical role in the emergence of partitioned knowledge.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1676-1688
Number of pages13
JournalMemory and Cognition
Volume34
Issue number8
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Dec 2006

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