Feedback and observational learning differ in effectiveness during category learning in early school aged children and adults

When learning new categories, do children benefit from the same types of training as adults? We compared the effects of feedback-based training with observational training in young adults (ages 18–25) and early school aged children (ages 6–7) across two different multimodal category learning tasks: conjunctive rule based and information integration. We used multimodal stimuli that varied across a visual feature (rotation speed of the “planet” stimulus) and an auditory feature (pitch frequency of a pure tone stimulus). We found an interaction between age and training type for the rule-based category task, such that adults performed better in feedback training than in observational training, whereas training type had no significant effect on children's category learning performance. Overall adults performed better than children in learning both the rule based and information integration category structures. In information integration category learning, feedback versus observational training did not have a significant effect on either adults' or children's category learning. Computational modelling revealed that children defaulted to univariate rules in both tasks. The finding that children do not benefit from feedback training and can learn successfully via observational learning has implications for the design of educational interventions appropriate for children.