Language
Country/Area
No result found
The magic of conceptual learning: How do we categorize everything in our lives?
Concept learning, also known as category learning, concept acquisition and concept formation, refers to the process of finding and distinguishing the common characteristics of different types of things during the thinking process.
Concept learning plays a vital role in both identifying objects in daily life and abstract thinking in academic research. According to Bruner et al., concept learning is a process of finding and testing features that can be used to distinguish instances from various categories. Therefore, effective concept learning can help us quickly identify and understand the world around us.
How do humans categorize everything? This question has far-reaching implications in many disciplines, including education, psychology, and computer science. They explore the circumstances under which learners are able to learn concepts from examples and further apply those concepts to future situations.
Concept formation
Concept formation relies on comparing and contrasting multiple categories. Specifically, learners need to distinguish between categories that contain the relevant features and those that do not. In this process, learners simplify what they observe into a few examples with common characteristics, which will be used to guide future learning.
In concept learning, the difficulty of the simplification process directly affects the learners' learning outcomes; when the concept is complex, it will become more difficult for learners to master it.
Concrete and abstract concepts
Concepts can be divided into concrete concepts and abstract concepts. Concrete concepts are objects that can be perceived through personal senses, such as chairs, dogs, etc.; while abstract concepts involve emotions, personality traits, and events, such as "fantasy" or "cold". According to Paivio's dual coding theory, concrete concepts are more easily remembered from perceptual memory, while the definition of abstract concepts often varies depending on different people's experiences.
Mathematical concepts such as addition and subtraction in early education are usually concrete, while religion and ethics belong to the category of learning abstract concepts.
Concept Acquisition and Bias
The acquisition of concepts is not only influenced by a person's past experience, but in fact, it is also affected by the function and purpose of the concepts being learned. Taking education as an example, when teachers design courses, they should fully consider the key attributes of defining tasks and their purpose.
However, learners may be subject to quality or source bias when acquiring concepts, which makes it necessary to carefully evaluate the credibility and quality of materials when studying concept learning. The comparison between some traditional learning methods and modern technologies also reveals the diversity and complexity of human learning concepts.
The influence of modern psychological theories
With the evolution of psychological theories, the research scope of concept learning is also expanding. From behaviorist reinforcement learning to computational and information flow models in cognitive psychology, these ideas have had a profound impact on the formation of our understanding of concepts.
ConclusionWhether it is prototype theory, exemplar theory or composite prototype theory, these models provide new ways to look at concept learning from multiple perspectives, giving us stronger explanatory power.
In the current educational context, how to effectively promote students' concept acquisition and application is not only a challenge faced by instructional designers, but also a skill that every learner needs to master. In such a cultural atmosphere, how will future learners accurately grasp and apply this knowledge in the ocean of concepts?
