Abstract
Four observers completed perceptual matching, identification, and categorization tasks using separable-dimension stimuli. A unified quantitative approach relating perceptual matching, identification, and categorization was proposed and tested. The approach derives from general recognition theory (Ashby & Townsend, 1986) and provides a powerful method for quantifying the separate influences of perceptual processes and decisional processes within and across tasks. Good accounts of the identification data were obtained from an initial perceptual representation derived from perceptual matching. The same perceptual representation provided a good account of the categorization data, except when selective attention to one stimulus dimension was required. Selective attention altered the perceptual representation by decreasing the perceptual variance along the attended dimension. These findings suggest that a complete understanding of identification and categorization performance requires an understanding of perceptual and decisional processes. Implications for other psychological tasks are discussed.
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This research was supported in part by National Science Foundation Grant SBR-9796206 and NIH Grant R01 MH59196. The author thanks Greg Ashby, Sergei Bogdanov, Corey Bohil, Leslie Cohen, Randy Diehl, Jeffrey Dodd, Wilson Geisler, and Arthur Markman for discussions that influenced this work and Greg Ashby, Anne-Marie Bonnel, Robert Nosofsky, and two anonymous reviewers for comments on an earlier version of this manuscript.
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Maddox, W.T. Separating perceptual processes from decisional processes in identification and categorization. Perception & Psychophysics 63, 1183–1200 (2001). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03194533
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03194533