Abstract
Subjects learned categories based on sentences that illustrated the figurative meaning of proverbs. The categories were either narrow, based on sentences that sampled similar contexts, or wide, otherwise. Width was a within-subjects factor in Experiment 1 and a between-subjects factor in Experiment 2. In general, transfer performance on novel examples suggested that width produces more flexible, decontextualized mental representations, but that subjects can overcome narrow experience.
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Honeck, R.P., Firment, M. Accessing abstract categories. Bull. Psychon. Soc. 27, 206–208 (1989). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03334585
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03334585