Measuring thoughts during knowledge acquisition

“We, as humans, are remarkably flexible in the use of our knowledge: For instance we are able to apply what we have learned during only a few experiences in novel situations or to problems that have never been directly experienced before,” explains study author Theves.

“If you walk through the city you live in, you’re able to take a shortcut without ever having tried it before. This is because the brain represents the spatial layout of the city. This might also be the case for representing knowledge. We have a concept in mind of what distinguishes a racing car from a truck. When we now spot an unknowkn vehicle, we can use the relation of relevant properties, such as engine power and weight, to locate the new vehicle in our mental map in order to identify which type of vehicle we’re looking at. So we might draw conclusion unconsciously, by placing the new exemplars appropriately within a mental map.”

In their study, participants acquired a new concept over the course of two days. For this purpose they learned to classify novel abstract images into two categories based on specific image-features. Following this learning phase, the MRI scanner was used to test whether the brain combines and stores the feature dimensions that were relevant to the acquisition of the concept in a map-like format in which individual images can be located.

Source: Measurement of thoughts during knowledge acquisition