Previous research has indicated that the way of learning and thesequence of study influence how we learn and representcategories. However, most studies have focused onclassification learning and it has been rarely studied howlearning sequence influences inference learning. The currentstudy attempted to address this issue. Participants learned fourcategories by classification or inference in both blocked andinterleaved sequence. Then participants completed a transfertask and a feature prediction task. Results showed thatclassification learners encoded characteristic features andformed similarity-based representations in the blocked study,whereas in the interleaved study, they encoded deterministicfeatures and formed rule-based representations. In contrast, forinference learners, the blocked and interleaved study changedtheir learning and representation in the same direction. In bothsequences, inference learners encoded deterministic featuresand formed rule-based representations. These results suggestthat different mechanisms are likely to be involved forinference and classification learning.

The ability to regulate mental processes is a critical component of human cognition. People vary in their ability ofcognitive control, with some showing more focused attention and less distractions from environmental stimulus. Who arethese people and what makes them better at cognitive control? This study attempts to answer these questions by examiningthe individual differences in cognitive control using variants of executive function tasks. Participants were given a flankertask which included congruent, incongruent and neutral trials, and all the trials were randomized and blocked based ondifferent visual angles of flankers ranging from 4.6 to 0.9. Participants were then given a standard Simon task (measure ofinhibition) and color-shape task (measure of switch). Results indicate that as the visual angle decreases, the interferencefrom flankers increases. More importantly, people who are better at inhibition or switch show a lesser extent of increasein interference.