CONCEPT FORMATION

process by which a person learns to sort specific experiences into general rules or classes. People are observed to lift a particular stone and to drive a specific car. When they seem to think about things, however, they often appear to deal with classes; apparently they know that stones (in general) sink and that automobiles (as a class) are powered by engines. They behave as if they think of these things in a general sense beyond any particular stone or automobile. Awareness of such classes can help guide behaviour in new situations. Thus two people in a bakery may never have met before; yet, if one can be classified as customer and the other as clerk, they tend to behave appropriately. Similarly, many people seem able to drive almost any automobile by knowing about automobiles in general. Concept formation is a term used to describe how a person learns to form classes; conceptual thinking refers to a person's subjective manipulations of those abstract classes. A concept is a rule that may be applied to decide if a particular object falls into a certain class. The concept citizen of the United States refers to such a decision rule, meaning any person who was born in U.S. territory or who is a child of a U.S. citizen or who has been legally naturalized. The rule suggests questions to ask in checking the citizenship of any particular individual. As most concepts do, it rests on other concepts; U.S. citizen is defined in terms of the concepts child and territory. Many scientific or mathematical concepts cannot be understood until the terms in which they are defined have been grasped. Concept formation builds on itself. Conceptual classification may be contrasted with another type of classification behaviour called discrimination learning. In discrimination learning, objects are classified on the basis of directly perceived properties such as physical size or shape. The usual explanation for discrimination learning is that the sensory features of any stimulus are matched to what is already remembered of these features, and that the learner's response becomes associated with them. The response thus classifies the stimulus. In discrimination learning subjective representations of immediate and past stimuli seem directly to indicate concrete, physical features (in contrast to the more abstract nature of concept formation). When a stimulus is perceived to match several different past experiences, the response may be a compromise; an object need not bear an all-or-none relation to a set of others in discrimination learningfor example, there is no absolute distinction between tall and short people. While human beings popularly are called abstract thinkers, many of the classifications people make clearly seem to be concrete discriminations. Indeed, people may use the same term either in a discriminative or conceptual way. A child uses the term policeman in discriminating a man in distinctive uniform, while a lawyer may have a concept of a civil servant charged with enforcing criminal codes. In practice, people seem to think in many ways that combine abstractness and concreteness. They also may blend class membership with assignment along a scale; e.g., such concepts as leadership, an abstract quality that people are said to exhibit in varying degrees. The same applies to vivacity, avarice, and other personality classifications. People seem to develop more complex sets of classes than do other animals, but this need not mean that human modes of learning are qualitatively unique. It may be that all animals have the same basic biochemical machinery for learning, but that human animals exhibit it in greater variety. Yet, it seems no more appropriate to account for human concept formation in terms of discrimination learning alone than it does to reduce the functions of a piston engine to chemical reactions. the process of sorting specific experiences into general rules or classes. It figures prominently in cognitive development and was a subject of great importance to the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget. Concept formation is a complex phenomenon that can be distinguished from discrimination, the relatively concrete ability to respond to differences among stimuli. Various laboratory experiments have been devised to understand how concepts are formed. The process seems to involve two main phases: in the first a person identifies important characteristics and in the second identifies how the characteristics are logically linked. Beyond simple classifications, concepts also may serve as norms or models that account for the potential of some things to fluctuate in some respects while remaining constant in others. While experimenters and theorists generally agree about observations of conceptual behaviour, there are wide metaphysical and epistemological differences concerning the nature and origins of concepts, the movement between intuitive and rational thought, and the question of cognitive universals. The stimulus-response theory of the American psychologist B.F. Skinner disallows reference to mental contents, stating that learning occurs through trial and error. The cognitive theory of Piaget contends that learning entails an understanding of unifying relationships and essences. The American psycholinguist Noam Chomsky argued that cognitive structures are structurally innate in human beings. Piaget argued that a child's interaction with environmental universals such as space, time, causality, chance, number, and identity (conservation of mass) makes possible his cognitive development. For Piaget, an infant's first concepts include the awareness that he is separate from his environment. The child's psychomotor skill development and hand-eye coordination play important functions in concept formation. His cognitive scheme grows through adulthood, when the mature adult can reflect and construct adaptive concepts. According to current thought, human beings do not have a monopoly on concept formation. Research on the development of concepts among animals, especially primates, has been extensive. Many researchers do not rule out the possibility that animals are capable of abstract thinking. In addition, the relationship of computer information-processing to human concept formation has been an important part of research in artificial intelligence. See also developmental psychology; thought. Additional reading Lyle E. Bourne, Jr., Human Conceptual Behavior (1966), provides a well-organized review of laboratory studies. Jerome S. Bruner, Jacqueline J. Goodnow, and George A. Austin, A Study of Thinking (1956, reprinted 1986), is a classic, well-written description of some experiments in the field. John H. Flavell, The Developmental Psychology of Jean Piaget (1963), offers a competent explanation of Piaget's controversial and provocative ideas. Earl B. Hunt, Concept Learning: An Information Processing Problem (1962, reprinted 1974), gives a comprehensive review and theoretical presentation of major approaches. B.F. Skinner, Verbal Behavior (1957), makes a challenging proposal for applying laboratory psychology. However, a critical review is presented by Noam Chomsky, A Review of B.F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior, in Jerry A. Fodor and Jerrold J. Katz (eds.), The Structure of Language: Readings in the Philosophy of Language (1964), pp. 547578. Works considering specialized topics include Steven Pinker, Language Learnability and Language Development (1984), which extends theories of language acquisition; and Henry M. Wellman, The Child's Theory of the Mind (1990). Earl B. Hunt The Editors of the Encyclopdia Britannica