Mixture of random effects for individual learning curves

Sally A. Wood, Melbourne Business School, University of Melbourne
Edward Cripps, University of Western Australia
Robert Wood, Melbourne Business School

Abstract

In the pyschology literature individuals are often classified as entity theorists or incrementalists. In this paper we explore the different learning behaviours over time of these two groups. To assess learning an individual is assigned a task and their performance on the task is measured over a number of trials. Learning behaviour is modelled as a mixture of two random effects, where the random effects components of the mixture correspond to increased learning and spiralling behaviour. We find significant differences in the learning behaviours of the two groups. Specifically those individuals who are categorized as entity theorists are more likely to exhibit spiralling behaviour and have narrower search strategies than those categorized as incremnatalists.