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Exemplar-based accounts of “multiple-system” phenomena in perceptual categorization

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Abstract

We demonstrate that a wide variety of recently reported “rule-described” and “prototype-described” phenomena in perceptual classification, which have led to the development of a number of multiplesystem models, can be given an alternative interpretation in terms of a single-system exemplar-similarity model. The phenomena include various rule- and prototype-described patterns of generalization, dissociations between categorization and similarity judgments, and dissociations between categorization and old-new recognition. The alternative exemplar-based interpretation relies on the idea that similarity is not an invariant relation but a context-dependent one. Similarity relations among exemplars change systematically because of selective attention to dimensions and because of changes in the level of sensitivity relating judged similarity to distance in psychological space. Adaptive learning principles may help explain the systematic influence of the selective attention process and of modulation in sensitivity settings on judged similarity.

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  1. Indiana University, Bloomington, India

    Robert M. Nosofsky & Mark K. Johansen

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  1. Robert M. Nosofsky
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  2. Mark K. Johansen
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Correspondence to Robert M. Nosofsky.

Additional information

This work was supported by Grant ROI MH48494-09 from the National Institute of Mental Health. We thank F. Gregory Ashby, John Wixted, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful criticisms of earlier versions of this article. We are also indebted to Michael Erickson for providing us with the original program code used to conduct Experiment I from Erickson and Kruschke ( 1998), and to J. David Smith for providing us with the individual subject data from J. D. Smith, Murray, and Minda (1997).

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Nosofsky, R.M., Johansen, M.K. Exemplar-based accounts of “multiple-system” phenomena in perceptual categorization. Psychon Bull Rev 7, 375–402 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03543066

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