Category learning with minimal prior knowledge

to all of the category's features. However, people's knowledge of real-world categories often consists of many "rote " features that are not related to their prior knowledge. Five experiments found that even minimal prior knowledge (1 knowledge-relevant feature and 5 rote features per exemplar) can facilitate category learning. Posttests revealed that although the knowledge aided learning, subjects also acquired the rote features that were not related to knowledge, contradicting predictions of an attentional expla-nation of the knowledge effect. The results of Experiment 6 suggested that subjects attempt to link even rote features to their knowledge