The Relation of Information Processing Behavior to Concept Formation.

This report investigates those factors, necessary for, or facilitative of, stimulus organization. Part I considers three experimentally controlled factors: (1) stimuli; (2) responses; and (3) temporal organization of stimuli. The results revealed that temporal specing accounted for different findings. When the intertrial interval (ITI) was present chunking occurred, however, this was not the case when there was no ITI. Part II investigates the nature of the organization changes observed in Part I, by use of the free recall clustering technique. Clustering results were in the appropriate direction, while recall pointed to an incompatibility of recognition and recall tasks. Thus the nature of the stimulus organization in Part I remains unclear. Part III investigates four individual difference factors (channel capacity, immediate memory, span of attention, and intelligence) and their influence on S-R learning and stimulus organization. Results showed that none of the factors had any effect on S-R learning. The data from the study is suggestive of the role of these factors in concept formation. (EK)