Department of Psychology, New York University, 6 Washington Place, New York, NY 10003, USA.
J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn. 2010 Sep;36(5):1171-206. doi: 10.1037/a0019765.
Research has documented two effects of interfeature causal knowledge on classification. A causal status effect occurs when features that are causes are more important to category membership than their effects. A coherence effect occurs when combinations of features that are consistent with causal laws provide additional evidence of category membership. In this study, we found that stronger causal relations led to a weaker causal status effect and a stronger coherence effect (Experiment 1), that weaker alternative causes led to stronger causal status and coherence effects (Experiment 2), and that "essentialized" categories led to a stronger causal status effect (Experiment 3), albeit only for probabilistic causal links (Experiment 4). In addition, the causal status effect was mediated by features' subjective category validity, the probability they occur in category members. These findings were consistent with a generative model of categorization but inconsistent with an alternative model.
研究记录了特征间因果知识对分类的两种影响。当因果关系的特征比其效应更能影响类别归属时，就会产生因果地位效应。当符合因果规律的特征组合提供类别归属的额外证据时，就会产生一致性效应。在这项研究中，我们发现，更强的因果关系导致因果地位效应减弱，一致性效应增强（实验 1），较弱的替代原因导致因果地位和一致性效应增强（实验 2），并且“本质化”的类别导致因果地位效应增强（实验 3），尽管只是针对概率因果关系（实验 4）。此外，因果地位效应受到特征主观类别有效性的中介，即它们在类别成员中出现的概率。这些发现与一种生成模型的分类一致，但与另一种模型不一致。
