Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

This study examines how situation information is incorporated in concept learning and representation. Unlike most concept learning studies, this study includes situation information during concept learning. Unlike most studies about the influence of situations on episodic memory, this study investigates how situations affects conceptual processing. Experiment 1 demonstrates that people rely on situation information when processing concepts. Subjects verified a concept's property more quickly if the property was learned and tested in the same situation. Experiment 2 shows that in order for a situation to produce priming, the situation must be related to the property in a meaningful manner. Mere cooccurrence between a property and a situation is not sufficient.