THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SUBSET SIZE AND HYPOTHESIS SELECTION DURING CHILDREN'S DISCRIMINATION LEARNING (STRATEGIES, STEREOTYPES, MEMORY, DEVELOPMENT)
Abstract
Two studies were designed to examine the relationship between subset size and hypothesis selection behavior. Study 1 assessed the assumptions that subset set size changed with development and that this change could not be accounted for by changes in memory. Children from first, third, and fifth grade were given various levels of pretraining designed to enhance memory for the hypotheses available in a discrimination task. The children were then presented with a discrimination task designed to assess subset size and a recall memory task designed to determine the number of hypotheses that a child had available for use in the discrimination task. An examination of the results revealed that subset size increased significantly from a mean of 4.76 hypotheses in first graders to 6.82 hypotheses in fifth graders. Also, memory was best described in terms of being a universe of available hypotheses, while subset size referred to a set of working hypotheses that were drawn from this universe. A second experiment was designed to determine whether subset size might influence hypothesis selection behavior. It was predicted that some children who have appropriate win-stay/lose-shift behavior (that is necessary to produce strategic response patterns) may have small subsets that interfere with the child's ability to respond in a strategic manner. In order to examine this possibility a new method that measured subset size and win-stay/lose-shift behavior in a discrimination task was used to assess the behavior of kindergarteners. Data generated by study 2 provided support for the assumption that subset size does affect hypothesis selection behavior. As a result, a new model of children's hypothesis testing behavior that described development as involving the progression through 3 levels of learning was postulated.
Degree
Ph.D.
Subject Area
Developmental psychology
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