A CROSS-CULTURAL STUDY OF CONJUNCTIVE AND DISJUNCTIVE CONCEPT LEARNING

Abstract

CIBOROWSKI, TOM, and COLE, MICHAEL. A Cross-cultural Study of Conjunctive and Disjunctive Concept Learning. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1972, 43, 774-789. 2-concept-formation experiments were conducted with groups of American and Liberian Ss differing in age and educational background. The 2 experiments were identical save for the inclusion of a powerful aid to memory in the second. In both experiments, Ss found conjunctive concepts easier than disjunctive concepts as manifested in a wide variety of measures. Some age-, education-, and culture-related differences were obtained in the first experiment, but most of these differences disappeared in the second. Overall, the performance of both cultural groups was strikingly similar; evidence of cultural differences centered on measures of the way stimuli were classified into subclasses and the relation between learning and verbalization.