Categorization and Reasoning Among Expert Populations

Northwestern University, Evanston IL

Investigators

Abstract

Throughout their life people continually acquire, refine and update concepts. These concepts and categories are use to understand, reason about, and make predictions concerning actions and events in the world. Although studies have provided a good base of information on how people acquire and use concepts, current theory and data are weighted toward category learning and organization among populations of relative novices. Our findings to date suggest that key generalizations concerning conceptual behavior may not hold for more expert populations. In addition our findings are revealing new principles of categorization and the use of categories in reasoning which are not addressed by current theories. This project will continue to investigate how the organization and use of categories changes as a function of goals and experience. Our study populations include different cultures as well as different types of expertise. We have begun to develop new models for category-based reasoning and the proposed studies will provide empirical tests of a new theory of inductive reasoning. This project constitutes basic research on human cognition but it is relevant to a variety of practical contexts such a science education.