Levin Daniel T, Angelone Bonnie L
Department of Psychology, Kent State University, OH 44121-0001, USA.
Perception. 2002;31(5):567-78. doi: 10.1068/p3315.
Traditionally, research demonstrating categorical perception (CP) has assumed that CP occurs only in cases where natural continua are divided categorically by long-term learning or innate perceptual programming. More recent research suggests that this may not be true, and that even novel continua between novel stimuli such as unfamiliar faces can show CP effects as well. Given this, we ask whether CP is dependent solely on the representation of individual stimuli, or whether stimulus categories themselves can also cause CP. Here, we test the hypothesis that continua between individual faces that cross the categorical boundary between races show an enhanced CP effect. We find that continua running from a black face to a white face do, indeed, show stronger CP effects than continua between two black faces or two white faces. This suggests that CP effects are enhanced when continua run between two distinctly represented individual stimuli, and are further enhanced when those individuals are, in turn, members of different stimulus categories.
传统上，证明范畴知觉（CP）的研究一直认为，CP仅发生在自然连续统通过长期学习或先天知觉程序被范畴化划分的情况下。最近的研究表明情况可能并非如此，即使是诸如陌生面孔等新刺激之间的新型连续统也可能表现出CP效应。鉴于此，我们要问CP是否仅依赖于单个刺激的表征，或者刺激类别本身是否也会导致CP。在这里，我们检验这样一个假设：跨越种族范畴边界的个体面孔之间的连续统会表现出增强的CP效应。我们发现，从一张黑脸到一张白脸的连续统确实比两张黑脸或两张白脸之间的连续统表现出更强的CP效应。这表明，当连续统在两个有明显区别的单个刺激之间变化时，CP效应会增强，而当这些个体依次属于不同的刺激类别时，CP效应会进一步增强。
