Effects of Feedback on Categorical Judgement and Resilience to Concept Boundary Change
The change in the prevalence of a stimulus has shown to cause changes in response, either shifting their boundary of the concept to harbor more of the rare stimulus, or even missing the stimulus presence in a visual search task. As formerly established in Levari et al. (2018), which used a spectrum of blue to purple as points to reference two conceptsas the prevalence of blue dots diminished, participants expanded their concept of blue, categorizing purple dots as blue more frequently, despite even informed knowledge or performance-based rewards. This phenomenon was coined “prevalence-induced concept change.” Our experiment explored whether this phenomenon of concept change can be lessened, or even eliminated through providing an objective form of feedback. We provided an answer feedback of the location of the judged stimulus on a color spectrum to help participants with their perception and judgement of future trials. Participants displayed resilience towards change in concept boundaries when presented with feedback before and during modification of stimulus prevalence.