Abstract
Current categorization models disagree about whether people make a priori assumptions about the structure of unfamiliar categories. Data from two experiments provided strong evidence that people do not make such assumptions. These results rule out prototype models and many decision bound models of categorization. We review previously published neuropsychological results that favor the assumption that category learning relies on a procedural-memory-based system, rather than on an instance- based system (as is assumed by exemplar models). On the basis of these results, a new categorylearning model is proposed that makes no a priori assumptions about category structure and that relies on procedural learning and memory.
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This research was supported by National Science Foundation Grant SBR95-14427. We thank Leola Alfonso-Reese for her invaluable help with the design of the experiments reported here and Barbara Knowlton, Robert Nosofsky, and John Wixted for their helpful suggestions.
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Ashby, F.G., Waldron, E.M. On the nature of implicit categorization. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 6, 363–378 (1999). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03210826
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03210826