Effect Of Conceptual Flexibility: The Role Of Features Nameability

It seems natural that category learning should help focus attention on relevant information and reduce attention to irrelevant information. However, in real life there are situations when it is important to retain all the information for successful categorization. In the study, we tested the hypothesis on how the nameability of object features affects the effect of conceptual flexibility. We used stimuli from an article by Vanderplas and Garvin (Vanderplas & Garvin, 1959), images of artificial objects with the same visual distinguishability, but with different levels of verbal association. Two experiments were conducted during the study. The two experiments had three sessions: two learning sessions and a third session - transferring the previously learned rule to new examples. The success in that session made it possible to evaluate the degree of effect of conceptual flexibility in conditions with high and low nameability. Experiments 1b and 2b consisted of different stimulus material. As a result, during experiment 1 we found that conceptual flexibility was higher when learning on objects with high nameability of features than with low nameability. However, in experiment 2 the effect of conceptual flexibility was detected, but the effect of nameability was not demonstrated.