Effects of Hypothesizing on Concept Learning

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of hypothesizing on concept learning. Such effects may depend upon task requirements. A 3 X 2 X 2 factorial design was used to assess the variables of time of hypothesizing (early in the task, late in the task, or no hypothesizing), rule type (conjunctive or conditional), and amount of information in the instructions (low amount as defined by a complete learning task or high amount as defined by an attribute identification task). The conjunctive rule was solved significantly more quickly than the conditional rule and attribute identification was solved significantly faster than complete learning, findings which concur with previous research. Interactions with the hypothesizing variable were not significant. The latter results were interpreted in terms of possible biasing effects of the experimental instructions.