TY - JOUR
T1 - Decision processes in verifying category membership statements
T2 - Implications for models of semantic memory
AU - McCloskey, Michael
AU - Glucksberg, Sam
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was performed while the first author held a National Science Foundation predoctoral fellowship. The research was partially supported by PHS Research Grant MH23401, S. Glucksberg, principal investigator. We are grateful to Joseph Danks, Arnold Glass, Tory Higgins, Keith Holyoak, Edward Smith, Herbert Clark, James Hampton, and Lance Rips for their constructive criticisms of an earlier draft of this paper. We would also like to thank Mike Flannagan for testing subjects in Experiment III. Requests for reprints should be sent to Michael McCloskey, Psychology Department, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218.
Copyright:
Copyright 2014 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 1979/1
Y1 - 1979/1
N2 - Current models of semantic memory assume that natural categories are well-defined. Specific predictions of two such models, the Smith, Shoben, and Rips (1974a) two-stage feature comparison model and the Glass and Holyoak (1974/75) ordered search model, were tested and disconfirmed in Experiment I. We propose an alternative model postulating fuzzy categories represented as sets of characteristic properties. This model, combined with a Bayesian decision process, accounts for the results of three additional experiments, as well as for the major findings in the semantic memory literature. We argue that people verify category membership statements by assessing similarity relations between concepts rather than by using information which logically specifies the truth value of the sentence. Our data also imply that natural categories are fuzzy rather than well-defined.
AB - Current models of semantic memory assume that natural categories are well-defined. Specific predictions of two such models, the Smith, Shoben, and Rips (1974a) two-stage feature comparison model and the Glass and Holyoak (1974/75) ordered search model, were tested and disconfirmed in Experiment I. We propose an alternative model postulating fuzzy categories represented as sets of characteristic properties. This model, combined with a Bayesian decision process, accounts for the results of three additional experiments, as well as for the major findings in the semantic memory literature. We argue that people verify category membership statements by assessing similarity relations between concepts rather than by using information which logically specifies the truth value of the sentence. Our data also imply that natural categories are fuzzy rather than well-defined.
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U2 - 10.1016/0010-0285(79)90002-1
DO - 10.1016/0010-0285(79)90002-1
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:0002732346
SN - 0010-0285
VL - 11
SP - 1
EP - 37
JO - Cognitive Psychology
JF - Cognitive Psychology
IS - 1
ER -