Project Details
Projekt
Abstraction Processes in Associative Learning
Subject Area
General, Cognitive and Mathematical Psychology
Term
since 2019
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 381713393
Associative learning typically refers to the learning of relationships between attributes, objects, or events in the world. The resulting representations may differ in the level of detail they preserve, which we consider one aspect in which amodal representations differ from modal ones. Amodal representations abstract away from the details of individual stimuli to focus on their shared or diagnostic properties. By contrast, modal representations preserve the features of the stimuli encountered. Presumably, amodal representations allow for stronger and wider generalization and are more robust than modal representations. In this project, we investigate the hypothesis that the abstractness of the relationships learned depends on the structure of the stimulus environment. Based on the notion of error-driven learning and cue-competition, we investigate potential moderators of the abstractness of representations such as stimulus variability and the sequence of stimulus presentation. In our project, we take on an integrative perspective, comparing the role of these factors between two central associative learning paradigms, namely evaluative conditioning and concept learning.
DFG Programme
Research Units
