Immediate and Sustained Effects of Verbal Labels for Newly-Learned Categories

Labels for the categories have been found to facilitate learning by boosting accuracy. According to the label-feedback hypothesis this facilitation is due to a mechanism selectively sensitizing perceptual dimensions. To further investigate the label facilitation phenomenon, one group of participants in our study learned both named and hard-to-name artificial categories, in a novel, within-subjects design. Another group of participants was administered a—highly similar—paired-associate task purportedly not involving sensitization of dimensions. Results showed that labels boosted accuracy during learning, but only when learning to categorize—not when learning to associate. The label-feedback hypothesis posits that labels exert an influence also after new categories have been learned. To test for sustained effects of labels, we administered a post-learning visual discrimination task while monitoring participants’ eye movements and analyzing dwell time on the trained shapes. There was some indication of sustained effects of labels for newly-learned categories, but there was no effect following learning to associate. Our results suggest that labels for newly-learned categories have immediate effects during learning, and that the effects of labels may also be sustained during post-learning processing