Abstract
To assess the effects of pretraining problems and type of instructions on concept identification 40 men and 40 women were given 0, 1, 2, or 3 pretraining problems prior to administration of an experimental concept problem. Instructions were either simply descriptive of the stimulus population and response requirements or elaborated such that S was told the rule defining problem solution and given a sample problem. Analyses showed a significant inverse relationship between number of pretraining problems and trials to criterion. Presolution data indicated that Ss changed problem-solving strategies both as a function of number of pretraining problems and type of instructions. Implications for theories of concept learning were discussed.
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