Week 8- Fact and Concept Learning.

Week 8’s lecture was all about fact and concept learning, and how to differentiate between the two.

Fact learning is of course, all about facts. It involves verbal information and 'knowing that' something is the case. There are 3 kinds of fact learning, namely labels and names (pairing of information by mentally making a connecting link between 2 elements), facts and lists (fact: a statement describing a relationship between or among concepts; list: a group of elements that must be remembered together), and organised discourse (learning through the comprehension of an extensive body of information, which must be tied to existing knowledge).

3 activities common to all fact learning are linking (through the use of mnemonics), organising (chunking sets together and establishing relationships among sets), and elaborating (adding on to new information so that it makes sense and is more easily remembered).Concept learning involves the ability to apply knowledge across a variety of instances or circumstances. There are 2 kinds of concepts, concrete (known by their physical characteristics, i.e. 5 senses) and abstract (not perceivable by their appearance).

Unlike facts, concepts have attributes. These are intrinsic, functional and relational. An intrinsic attribute is simply a constant property and is observable. It makes up the property of the concept. A functional attribute relates to how something works or is used. A relational attribute refers to a quality a concept may possess defined in terms of something else. For example, putting others first may be a quality of the concept love.What then is the difference between fact and concept learning? Well, according to the lecture, if it has a definition, it’s a concept. If not, it’s a fact. What’s important, though, I think, is not to learn a concept just by learning its definition, but to also understand and be able to grasp it in any context.

For example, a child who learns the definition of a durian as green and a fruit with a thorny appearance has not learnt the definition well if he is unable to spot a durian in a fruitstall.