The role of background knowledge in the development of conceptual flexibility effect

Abstract

The effect of conceptual flexibility involves inclusion of attributes that are irrelevant to the formed category in the concept and their further handling where required. The previous studies show that the conceptual flexibility effect arises while performing feature inference tasks and doesn’t arise while performing classification tasks. In the last case attention becomes too focused on one attribute. In the study the hypothesis according to which the conceptual flexibility effect may arise while performing classification tasks is tested on a sample of students (N=60). As this take place objects with attributes that are functionally connected and potentially related to semantic knowledge of the students are used as stimuli.