The purpose of this study is to explore the role goals play inconcept acquisition. Goals motivate and shape ourinteractions with items, so it stands to reason that they alsoimpact the learning that occurs as a result of thoseinteractions. There is abundant evidence that goals orient usto particular information about the items we encounter. Amore speculative claim is that goals play a more integral rolein the acquired concept in that they also help to structure andcohere the acquired conceptual knowledge. Using a novelconcept learning paradigm, we examined participantknowledge of attributes of the items they interacted with inan experimental task. We found evidence that the interactionof the goal with the learning situation impacted the centralityof the attribute information within their conceptualknowledge. These results support the idea that conceptualknowledge is organized in terms of goals active duringlearning.

With two experiments, we begin an inquiry into theperceived explanatory value of mathematical entities ineveryday explanations. This work is motivated by aphilosophical debate about the role mathematical entitiesplay in explanation. Simply put, are the mathematicalentities themselves explanatory, or is mathematical talkelliptical or shorthand for talk about the physical entities weare concerned with? Across the two experiments, we foundclear evidence that situational factors affected how themathematical entities were considered. However, whenthose situational factors are accounted for, participantstended to see more explanatory value for mathematicalentities that point to other objects involved in the explanationas opposed to mathematical entities that assume theexplanatory role themselves.