ABSTRACT
Many real world situations do not offer unambiguous outcome feedback on how to categorize objects. Models in the categorization literature have mostly been formulated for tasks with trial-by-trial outcome feedback. We examined if there was evidence for exemplar memory also when no external feedback is provided and the criterion is derivative of more abstract knowledge. In a “teacher-student” task, a teacher learns how to judge the toxicity of bugs from external outcome feedback and conveys this knowledge to a student that receives no outcome feedback. The results showed that the students exhibit exemplar effects even if the instructions from the teachers were in the form of rules.
