Effects of Contiguity and Meaningfulness of Relevant and Irrelevant Attributes on Concept Formation

Meaningfulness of the relevant (MR) and irrelevant (MI) syllables and contiguity of the relevant syllables were manipulated in a task analogous to concept formation. Stimuli consisted of two nonsense syllables with one being relevant, in that it was consistently paired with a number response, and the other being irrelevant, in that it appeared equally often with each number response. MR was varied within 5s, while MI and contiguity were varied between 5"s. Learning was by the study-test method, with 5s required to identify the relevant syllables and give the associated number response on test trials. Contiguity facilitated identification of the relevant syllable. There was an MR X MI interaction such that identification was dependent upon the differences between MR and MI, with greater differences producing earlier identification. There also appeared to be a positive relationship between MR and identification. Since a conditional probability analysis indicated that there may have been differential associative learning prior to the completion of identification learning, the effects of meaningfulness and contiguity on the associative stage could not be unambiguously determined.