Even though past research suggests that visual learning may benefit from conceptual knowledge, current interventions for medical image evaluation often focus on procedural knowledge, mainly by teaching classification algorithms. We compared the efficacy of pure procedural knowledge (three-point checklist for evaluating skin lesions) versus…

Automated image analysis has received increasing attention in social scientific research, yet existing scholarship has mostly covered the application of supervised learning to classify images into predefined categories. This study focuses on the task of unsupervised image clustering, which aims to automatically discover categories from unlabelled…

Linguistic and non-linguistic pattern learning have been studied separately, but we argue for a comparative approach. Analogous inductive problems arise in phonological and visual pattern learning. Evidence from three experiments shows that human learners can solve them in analogous ways, and that human performance in both cases can be captured by…

The most common tools individuals use to articulate complex and abstract concepts are writing and spoken language, long privileged as primary forms of communication. However, our, explanations of these concepts may be more aptly communicated through visual means, such as drawings. Interpreting and analyzing abstract graphic representations is…

Humans have an extremely flexible ability to categorize regularities in their environment, in part because of attentional systems that allow them to focus on important perceptual information. In formal theories of categorization, attention is typically modeled with weights that selectively bias the processing of stimulus features. These theories…

This report uses mental model theory to create a taxonomy of picture functions in order to relate these functions to learning theories. A rough outline of picture functions is presented, consisting of a retrieval function, a focus function, a construction function, and a supplantation function. It is suggested that this taxonomy could be helpful…

Incidental learning research with mentally retarded children has produced findings inconsistent with those reported for the intellectually normal population. This study was designed to further investigate the efficacy of incidental semantic classification instructions relative to taxonomic classification instructions or superficial color…

Twenty-seven kindergarten subjects were trained on two different double classification matrix tasks to determine whether they were hierarchically related. Prior behavioral analyses had shown one task to be simpler than the other. It was assumed that, in hierarchical transfer relationships, one order of task acquisition is more favorable than…