Language
Country/Area
No result found
From examples to understanding: What is the secret process of concept learning?
Concept learning, or category learning, is a topic that encompasses a variety of psychological and educational theories. According to Bruner et al., concept learning is "the process of finding and testing attributes that distinguish samples from non-samples of various categories." Although such a description is academic, it reveals the core of concept learning, which is how to build a classification system in the mind by comparing similar and different things.
Conceptual learning requires learners to identify and distinguish the objects they observe and summarize their common characteristics.
The elements of the process of learning concepts include: the definition of the task, the nature of the examples encountered, the nature of the verification process, the consequences of specific classifications, and the restrictions imposed. The basic task of concept learning is to extract the core features of the concept through the observation of similar words, images or objects, and apply them in future situations. This process can be simply described as "learning from examples", that is, the process of transforming knowledge from concrete to abstract.
Given this, concept formation can be either simple or complex. When a concept is difficult to understand, it will be more difficult for learners to simplify it, which will affect the effectiveness of learning. Furthermore, theories of concept learning are mostly based on the storage of samples, avoiding any form of summarization or abstraction.
Being able to infer valid concept properties from given instances is key in both machine learning and human learning.
The types of concepts are also very wide, ranging from concrete (perceptible) concepts to abstract concepts. Concrete concepts such as "chair" or "dog" are established through direct interaction with them through the senses. Abstract concepts involve emotions and events, which may be understood differently by each person. For example, "cold" can be a temperature for one person, but a character trait for another. Because everyone's experience will affect their understanding of these concepts.
In the process of concept learning, especially in education, the comparison between concrete and abstract concepts is crucial. Such comparisons can help students derive abstract principles from intuitive examples. For young children, when learning directions such as "north", "south", "east", and "west", teachers often use interesting mnemonics to help them remember, such as "Don't eat soggy waffles." This kind of gamification learning method makes learning more interesting and acceptable.
From a teaching perspective, designing effective learning plans and methods is the key to concept acquisition.
Furthermore, the acquisition of concepts is not only based on memory but also on more profound psychological mechanisms, including analogical learning, summarization and reasoning. Whenever we are exposed to new information, our brain’s learning patterns respond by challenging our known concepts, thereby facilitating the formation of new concepts. In addition, the combination of psychology and cognitive science has led to the continuous evolution of the research direction of concept learning. Just as the Bayesian learning theory that relies on hypothesis testing has increasingly become one of the important tools for understanding human learning.
Finally, although the process and theory of concept learning may be very complex, a core question remains to be pondered: How do we use these concepts to classify and understand in our daily lives?
