Prototype abstraction and distinctive feature learning: an application to learning Chinese characters created by Noriyuki Matsuda and Donald Robbins

Chinese characters with related meanings often have a common symbol included among their components. In an exemplar-prototype and distinctive feature classification system, the multiple-component characters (the exemplars) can be said to have a common component (the prototype) distinctive to the shared concept. A study was conducted with 60 undergraduates who were administered recognition tests with new and old exemplars and prototypes. Results show that the traditional language learning technique of paired-associate training with exemplars of Chinese characters and specific English translations led to the poorest performance of the 3 methods tested. Learning either the English concept for Chinese exemplars (exemplar-category training) or the English concept for only the distinctive feature (prototype training) produced greatly superior performance. Instructions regarding the nature of Chinese characters had no effect on performance.