Effects of Response Modes on Concept Identification

Abstract

40 subjects solved three concept-identification problems under one of four treatment conditions. Purpose of the experiment was to determine how the response format used by subjects affected their performance. Subjects used one of four possible response modes: verbalize a single hypothesis when they thought they had the correct answer, verbalize a new hypothesis each time they decided to switch answers, classify each stimulus as positive or negative, or classify stimuli as positive or negative and verbalize a hypothesis on each error. Preliminary analysis indicated that both main effects, problems and response format, were significant. However, a correction for the implicit criterion used by subjects who verbalized a single hypothesis suggested that these subjects were able to learn as fast as those in the other treatment conditions and that response format did not differentially affect concept-identification performance.