118 research outputs found
Thinking and Deciding, Jonathan Baron, Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/113714/1/3960030207_ftp.pd
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Structural and Thematic Alignments in Similarity Judgments
e examined similarity judgments between simple Noun-Verb?Noun statements that were matched either in their verbs or nouns (separate matches) and made either analogous or non?analogous assertions (combined matches). An analysis of written justifications that accompanied subjects' similarity judgments revealed that matching verbs and matching nouns lead to two qualitatively different types of alignments. Matching verbs (e.g., "The carpenter fixed the chair" and "The plumber fixed the radio") led subjects to construct structural alignments and evaluate the quality of the resulting analogies (e.g., "Not analogous because plumbers don't fix radios as part of their job"). By contrast, and contrary to any traditional account of similarity as a process of comparison, matching nouns (e.g., "The carpenter fixed the chair" and "The carpenter sat on the chair") led subjects to construct thematic ahgnments and evaluate similarity based on the plausibility of the resulting causal or temporal scenarios (e.g., "He sat on the chair to see whether he fixed it well")
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A Two-stage Categorization Model of Family Resemblance Sorting
A two-stage model is applied to category construction. The first stage of the model involves looking for a defining feature among exemplars and creating initial categories based on the defining features. In the second stage, overall similarity is calculated to categorize the remaining exemplars that were not classified by the defining feature. For some types of exemplar structures, family resemblance sorting emerges as a product of the two-stage model. A series of experiments was carried out to contrast the two-stage model with Anderson's induction model (Anderson, 1988)and CLUSTER/2 (Michalski & Stepp, 1983). The results showed that the two-stage model is abetter predictor of when family resemblance sorting will or will not occur
Relations Relating Relations
The aim of the current work is to incorporate structural information in judgments of similarity. According to the assumption of feature independence, h o w one feature affects similarity is independent of the values of the other features present. W e present three violations of this assumption, all arising from Uie influence of relations between features and of relations between relations. A shared relation is more important for similarity judgments if it cooccurs with (A) relations that augment the first relation by "pointing in the same direction" as the first relation, (B)relations which are themselves salient, and (C) salient relations that involve the same objects as the first relation. We interpret these results as suggesting that relations do not have separately determined weights or saliences; the weight of a relation depends the relational structure in which it exists. Relations influence each other by creating higher order relational structures, and also by affecting processing
What's so essential about essentialism? A different perspective on the interaction of perception, language, and conceptual knowledge
Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/30864/1/0000527.pd
When humans become animals: Development of the animal category in early childhood
a b s t r a c t The current study examines 3-and 5-year-olds' representation of the concept we label 'animal' and its two nested concepts -animal contrastive (including only non-human animals) and animal inclusive (including both humans and non-human animals). Building upon evidence that naming promotes object categorization, we introduced a novel noun for two distinct objects, and analyzed children's patterns of extension. In Experiment 1, children heard a novel noun in conjunction with two non-human animals (dog, bird). Here, both 3-and 5-year-olds readily accessed animal contrastive and extended the noun systematically to other (previously un-named) non-human animals. In Experiment 2, children heard a novel noun in conjunction with a human and non-human animal. Here, 5-year-olds (but not 3-year-olds) accessed animal inclusive and extended the noun systematically to humans and non-human animals. These results underscore the developmental challenge facing young children as they identify the scope of the fundamental biological term 'animal' and its corresponding, nested concept(s)
A two-stage model of category construction
The current consensus is that most natural categories are not organized around strict definitions (a list of singly necessary and jointly sufficient features) but rather according to a family resemblance (FR) principle: Objects belong to the same category because they are similar to each other and dissimilar to objects in contrast categories. A number of computational models of category construction have been developed to provide an account of how and why people create FR categories [Anderson, 1990]; [Fisher, 1987]. Surprisingly, however, only a few experiments on category construction or free sorting have been run and they suggest that people do not sort examples by the FR principle. We report several new experiments and a two-stage model for category construction. This model is contrasted with a variety of other models with respect to their ability to account for when FR sorting will and will not occur. The experiments serve to identify one basis for FR sorting and to support the two-stage model. The distinctive property of the two-stage model is that it assumes that people impose more structure than the examples support in the first stage and that the second stage adjusts for this difference between preferred and perceived structure. We speculate that people do not simply assimilate probabilistic structures but rather organize them in terms of discrete structures plus noise.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/30288/1/0000690.pd
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