Competitions of Verbal and Implicit Systems(COVIS)

1
Learning Rule-Decribed and Non-Rule-Described
Categories A Comparison of Children and
Adults J.P. Minda, A.S. Desroaches, B.A. Church

• Competitions of Verbal and Implicit
  Systems(COVIS)
• Explicit/Verbal System of Category learning is
  default
• Procedural system takes over under cognitive load
  or when explicit rules are not effective
• Uses a cohort cross sectional(ages 3, 5, 8, and
  adult) experiment to examine age differences

• Children and adults perform similarly when
  differentiating categories that follow one rule
  or involve family resemblance
• Adults perform better when multiple rules
  differentiate categories
• Reduction in adult performance under verbal load,
  but not non-verbal load
• Improvement in childrens performance on two-rule
  categories with training
• Improvement in adult performance on family
  resemblance with training

• Strengths
• Clear methodology and relation to theory
• Repeated studies support the central finding
• Theory provides clear developmental implications
• Weaknesses
• Cohort cross sectional
• Potentially discrepant finding- adults and
  family resemblance
• Partial check on strategy differences