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Updated: Oct 15, 2025

Defining the Role Of Language in Infants' Object Categorization with Eye-tracking Paradigms
Published on: February 8, 2019
When instructions don't help: Knowing the optimal strategy facilitates rule-based but not information-integration
Luke A Rosedahl1, Raina Serota1, F Gregory Ashby1
1Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, University of California, Santa Barbara.
Abstract:
Providing verbal or written instructions on how to perform optimally in a task is one of the most common ways to teach beginners. This practice is so widely accepted that scholarship primarily focuses on how to provide instructions, not whether these instructions help or not. Here we investigate the benefits of prior instruction on rule-based (RB) category-learning, in which the optimal strategy is a simple explicit rule, and information-integration (II) category-learning, in which the optimal strategy is similarity-based. Participants (N = 58) learned either RB or II categories, with or without verbal and written instruction about the optimal categorization strategy. Instructions significantly improved performance with RB categories but had no effect with II categories. The theoretical and practical implication of these results is discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
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