Understanding individual differences in representational abstraction: The role of working memory capacity

Stukken, Loes; Rensbergen, Bram Van; Vanpaemel, Wolf; Storms, Gerrit

doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2016.06.002

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…Instead of interpreting working memory capacity as related to performance on complex rules, we can interpret it as necessary for constructing more clusters, because each additional cluster means that there is more information to represent. Rabi and Minda argued that Type II may be more influenced by working memory than Type IV and recently, Stukken, Van Rensbergen, Vanpaemel, and Storms (2016) showed that higher working memory ability was related to utilization of a greater number of clusters during categorization. However, contrary to this view, Lewandowsky (2011) found that working memory capacity affected performance on Types I–VI similarly.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Deficits in category learning in older adults: Rule-based versus clustering accounts.

Badham

Sanborn

Maylor

2017

Psychology and Aging

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Memory research has long been one of the key areas of investigation for cognitive aging researchers but only in the last decade or so has categorization been used to understand age differences in cognition. Categorization tasks focus more heavily on the grouping and organization of items in memory, and often on the process of learning relationships through trial and error. Categorization studies allow researchers to more accurately characterize age differences in cognition: whether older adults show declines in the way in which they represent categories with simple rules or declines in representing categories by similarity to past examples. In the current study, young and older adults participated in a set of classic category learning problems, which allowed us to distinguish between three hypotheses: (a) rule-complexity: categories were represented exclusively with rules and older adults had differential difficulty when more complex rules were required, (b) rule-specific: categories could be represented either by rules or by similarity, and there were age deficits in using rules, and (c) clustering: similarity was mainly used and older adults constructed a less-detailed representation by lumping more items into fewer clusters. The ordinal levels of performance across different conditions argued against rule-complexity, as older adults showed greater deficits on less complex categories. The data also provided evidence against rule-specificity, as single-dimensional rules could not explain age declines. Instead, computational modeling of the data indicated that older adults utilized fewer conceptual clusters of items in memory than did young adults.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Deficits in category learning in older adults: Rule-based versus clustering accounts.

Badham

Sanborn

Maylor

2017

Psychology and Aging

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“…This reasoning can lead to a number of specific hypotheses that one can evaluate using rigorous human cognitive studies or other means suitable to a specific hypothesis. For example, one might hypothesize that the marginal value of abstraction is greater as problem complexity increases or that individuals with superior working memory capacity (which has been shown to indicate improved abstraction ability 35 ) are more successful with complex systems design problems.…”

Section: Breakout Group 2: Strategic Purpose Of Abstraction and Elabomentioning

confidence: 99%

An interdisciplinary strategy to advance systems engineering theory: The case of abstraction and elaboration

Topcu

Triantis

Malak

et al. 2020

Systems Engineering

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Prior advances in systems engineering (SE) theory were instrumental in defining the discipline and its tools, but are limited in perspective. The SE community needs new theoretical advances to address its existing and emerging sociotechnical challenges. This communication paper is a product of an NSF/SERC/INCOSE funded workshop on theory building in SE with a focus on the use of abstraction and elaboration. The overarching goals of the workshop were twofold. First, to illustrate the nuances and complexities of the theory building process with an emphasis on developing theory about the SE discipline rather than about a particular system of interest. The second goal was to stimulate a new wave of SE theory by providing a set of frames that could be used for formal theory articulation in follow‐up research. The workshop focused on abstraction and elaboration due to their richness and pervasiveness in SE and investigated the concept in two interrelated contexts: (a) the social coordination of design teams and (b) its strategic use during system design. For each research context, we offer a structured guideline for theorizing, and provide an understanding and framing of some of the generalized abstraction and elaboration uses in SE. Research frames articulated in this workshop could serve as the first step for future research on SE theory, which necessitates hypotheses generation, data collection, validation, and refinement.

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Conceptualizing values abstractly: Longitudinal development and the role of concept formation and working memory

Misgav

Daniel²

2022

Cognitive Development

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Understanding individual differences in representational abstraction: The role of working memory capacity

Cited by 5 publications

References 32 publications

Deficits in category learning in older adults: Rule-based versus clustering accounts.

Deficits in category learning in older adults: Rule-based versus clustering accounts.

An interdisciplinary strategy to advance systems engineering theory: The case of abstraction and elaboration

Conceptualizing values abstractly: Longitudinal development and the role of concept formation and working memory

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