A Study of Thinking by Jerome S. Bruner

Author:Jerome S. Bruner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 1986-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

An Exploratory Experiment*

The exploratory experiment with which the remainder of the chapter is concerned was designed to examine the manner in which intelligent adults go about the attainment of disjunctive concepts. The subjects, again students in Harvard College, were 50 in number and were divided into five groups in a manner presently to be described. As in all of our experimental procedures, they were told openly what their task was: to find out which cards on a board before them were the positive cards and which were negative in the sense of exemplifying or not exemplifying a concept that the experimenter had in mind. They were told, moreover, that the concepts which they had to discover were of the disjunctive type and a full explanation of these was given. The explanation was readily grasped since it was illustrated by reference to the stimuli present before the subject. The subjects, always tested individually, could choose one card at a time in any order they wished and after each choice the experimenter would tell them whether the card was positive or negative. After each choice the subjects could offer an hypothesis as to the concept and these the experimenter honored by indicating whether they were right or wrong. If the former, the problem was considered finished. While the subjects were not told that they must limit themselves to one hypothesis after each choice, they rarely offered more than one and often offered none.

The stimulus array was always in view of the subject. It was composed of the combination of four attributes, each with two values, totalling 16 instances. Each instance contained two figures: a small one and a large one. The small figure varied in color ( black or yellow, b or y) and in shape (rectangle or triangle, r or t); the large figure varied in the same way: yellow or black in color, (B or Y), rectangular or triangular in shape (R or T). Thus, a given instance might be a small black rectangular figure and a large yellow triangular figure or any of the 16 combinations possible in such an array. The cards were set out in a random array on the board.

Each subject had three concepts to attain, and all of the concepts used were defined by only two attributes. The subject was told this in advance and thus always knew that his task was to find which two attributes and their values were relevant for defining the concept. Thus, a concept might be a “small triangle or a large rectangle or both,” and any instance that had either a small rectangle, or a large triangle, or both would be positive. Now, in this array, four instances would contain one half of the concept and thus be positive, four others would be positive because they exhibited the other half of the concept, and still four others would be positive and contain both features of the disjunctive concept. In all, then, 12 of the 16 cards would always be positive, the remainder negative in the sense of not exemplifying the concept.

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