TY - JOUR
T1 - Category coherence and category-based property induction
AU - Rehder, Bob
AU - Hastie, Reid
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank Evan Heit for his valuable suggestions and comments on this research. Support for this research was provided by funds from the National Science Foundation (Grant Numbers SBR 98-16458 and SBR 97-20304) and from the National Institute of Mental Health (Grant Number R01 MH58362).
PY - 2004/3
Y1 - 2004/3
N2 - One important property of human object categories is that they define the sets of exemplars to which newly observed properties are generalized. We manipulated the causal knowledge associated with novel categories and assessed the resulting strength of property inductions. We found that the theoretical coherence afforded to a category by inter-feature causal relationships strengthened inductive projections. However, this effect depended on the degree to which the exemplar with the to-be-projected predicate manifested or satisfied its category's causal laws. That is, the coherence that supports inductive generalizations is a property of individual category members rather than categories. Moreover, we found that an exemplar's coherence was mediated by its degree of category membership. These results were obtained across a variety of causal network topologies and kinds of categories, including biological kinds, non-living natural kinds, and artifacts.
AB - One important property of human object categories is that they define the sets of exemplars to which newly observed properties are generalized. We manipulated the causal knowledge associated with novel categories and assessed the resulting strength of property inductions. We found that the theoretical coherence afforded to a category by inter-feature causal relationships strengthened inductive projections. However, this effect depended on the degree to which the exemplar with the to-be-projected predicate manifested or satisfied its category's causal laws. That is, the coherence that supports inductive generalizations is a property of individual category members rather than categories. Moreover, we found that an exemplar's coherence was mediated by its degree of category membership. These results were obtained across a variety of causal network topologies and kinds of categories, including biological kinds, non-living natural kinds, and artifacts.
KW - Categories
KW - Category-based property induction
KW - Classification
KW - Coherence
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U2 - 10.1016/S0010-0277(03)00167-7
DO - 10.1016/S0010-0277(03)00167-7
M3 - Article
C2 - 14738770
AN - SCOPUS:0347301664
SN - 0010-0277
VL - 91
SP - 113
EP - 153
JO - Cognition
JF - Cognition
IS - 2
ER -