Mere exposure facilitates category learning of novel objects

Jonathan R. Folstein, Isabel Gauthier, & Thomas J. Palmeri

Abstract: We investigated how prior exposure to objects affects category learning. Experiment 1 demonstrated that prior exposure benefited the rate and accuracy of learning. In Experiment 2, exposure to object features facilitated category learning with new objects, and correlation among pre-exposed object dimensions influenced learning. In both experiments, the collection of pre-exposed objects provided no information regarding the categories to be learned, ruling out implicit learning during pre-exposure. Instead, results are interpreted with respect to statistical learning mechanisms, providing one of the first demonstrations of how statistical learning can influence visual object learning.

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