Department of Psychology, University of Leuven, Tiensestraat 102, Leuven, Belgium.
Mem Cognit. 2011 Aug;39(6):1117-32. doi: 10.3758/s13421-011-0083-2.
Abstract categories present with graded structure. The extent to which feature commonality between exemplars and category provides a satisfying account of this graded structure varies from one abstract category to the other (Hampton, 1981). We investigate whether the incorporation of features that exemplars share with external categories yields an improved account of abstract categories' graded structures. In doing so, we follow the suggestion that abstract categories are relational in nature (Goldstone, 1996; Wiemer-Hastings & Xu, 2005). The generalized polymorphous concept model, which incorporates both types of features, is found to improve the account of typicality and category membership in three of seven studied abstract categories. These three categories are found to be the most abstract, suggesting that it is appropriate to think of abstract categories as varying along a continuum of abstractness/interrelatedness rather than as a distinct type of category altogether.
抽象类别呈现出等级结构。范例与类别之间的特征共性在多大程度上为这种等级结构提供了令人满意的解释，因抽象类别而异（Hampton，1981）。我们调查了是否将范例与外部类别共享的特征纳入其中，是否可以对抽象类别的等级结构做出更好的解释。在这样做的过程中，我们遵循了抽象类别本质上是关系性的观点（Goldstone，1996；Wiemer-Hastings 和 Xu，2005）。事实证明，包含这两种特征的广义多态概念模型可以改善对七个研究的抽象类别中三个类别的典型性和类别成员身份的解释。这三个类别被认为是最抽象的，这表明将抽象类别视为沿着抽象性/相关性的连续体变化而不是作为一种完全不同类型的类别是合适的。
