Biomedical subjects

John P Clapper

Publications and source records attributed to John P Clapper.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

When more is less: negative exposure effects in unsupervised learning.

In this article, two broad classes of models of unsupervised learning are compared: correlation tracking models, according to which learning is expected to increase monotonically with exposure to instances, and category invention models, which can accommodate specific violations of monotonicity (negative exposure effects). In two experiments, increasing the number of training instances had a negative rather than a positive effect on unsupervised learning, a clear violation of monotonicity. The results of these experiments are then compared with the predictions of two computational models, one a category invention model and the other a correlation tracking model. The category invention model was able to reproduce the qualitative pattern of results from the human data, whereas the correlation tracking model was not. Overall, these results provide strong evidence for the existence of a discrete category invention process in unsupervised learning.

Affect↗

PubMed2002

Adaptive categorization in unsupervised learning.

In 3 experiments, the authors provide evidence for a distinct category-invention process in unsupervised (discovery) learning and set forth a method for observing and investigating that process. In the 1st 2 experiments, the sequencing of unlabeled training instances strongly affected participants' ability to discover patterns (categories) across those instances. In the 3rd experiment, providing diagnostic labels helped participants discover categories and improved learning even for instance sequences that were unlearnable in the earlier experiments. These results are incompatible with models that assume that people learn by incrementally tracking correlations between individual features; instead, they suggest that learners in this study used expectation failure as a trigger to invent distinct categories to represent patterns in the stimuli. The results are explained in terms of J. R. Anderson's (1990, 1991) rational model of categorization, and extensions of this analysis for real-world learning are discussed.

Analysis of Variance↗

PubMed1994

Category invention in unsupervised learning.

This research aimed to discriminate between 2 general approaches to unsupervised category learning, one based on learning explicit correlational rules or associations within a stimulus domain (autocorrelation) and the other based on inventing separate categories to capture the correlational structure of the domain (category invention). An "attribute-listing" paradigm was used to index unsupervised learning in 3 experiments. Each experiment manipulated the order in which instances from 2 different categories were presented and evaluated the effects of this manipulation in terms of the 2 competing theoretical approaches to unsupervised learning. Strong evidence was found for the use by Ss of a discrete category invention process to learn the categories in these experiments. These results also suggest that attribute listing may be a valuable method for future investigations of unsupervised category learning.

Adult↗