J.P. Minda, A.S. Desroaches, B.A. Church Learning Rule-Decribed and Non-Rule-Described Categories: A Comparison of Children and Adults J.P. Minda, A.S. Desroaches, B.A. Church Competitions of Verbal and Implicit Systems(COVIS) Explicit/Verbal System of Category learning is default Procedural system takes over under cognitive load or when explicit rules are not effective Uses a cohort cross sectional(ages 3, 5, 8, and adult) experiment to examine age differences Children and adults perform similarly when differentiating categories that follow one rule or involve ‘family resemblance’ Adults perform better when multiple rules differentiate categories Reduction in adult performance under verbal load, but not non-verbal load Improvement in children’s performance on two-rule categories with training Improvement in adult performance on ‘family resemblance’ with training Strengths: Clear methodology and relation to theory Repeated studies support the central finding Theory provides clear developmental implications Weaknesses: Cohort cross sectional Potentially discrepant finding- adults and ‘family resemblance’ Partial check on strategy differences