Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

We distinguish between instance learning and rule learning (e.g. Shanks & St. John, 1994). Instance learning involves memorizing learning mstances while rule learning involves the abstraction of an underlying rule. Instance learning and rule learning can be explained by a dual space model of leammg (Klahr & Dunbar, 1988; Simon & Lea, 1974). In relation to Simon and Lea's model, instance learning can be said to occur in instance space while rule learning makes use of both instance space and hypothesis space. We describe an experiment to test the view that whether instance learning or rule learning occurs depends on the learning goal and on whether or not the subjects explain what they are doing. Subjects were asked to learn a dynamic computer control task guided by either a specific or a non-specific goal. During learning, subjects also carried out a secondary task. They either described what they were doing during learning or explained what they were doing. We predicted that giving descriptions would favour instance learning and prevent rule learning irrespective of the learning goal, since giving descriptions forces subjects to focus on the task itself. Giving explanations should favour rule learning when subjects are given a non-specific goal, since both the non-specific goal and giving explanations focus on the reasons for the computer's behaviour. Giving explanations should not lead to rule learning when subjects have a specific goal since the specific goal forces subjects to focus on a search of instance space and to neglect the hypothesis space. The results confirmed these predictions. They support the view that goal specificity guides learning by directing attention to either instance space or both instance space and rule space, and that giving explanations encourages the revision of hypotheses in the light of the evidence.