Department of Psychology, University of Leuven, Tiensestraat 102, Box 3721, BE-3000 Leuven.
J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn. 2011 Nov;37(6):1515-31. doi: 10.1037/a0024431. Epub 2011 Jul 18.
A contrast category effect on categorization occurs when the decision to apply a category term to an entity not only involves a comparison between the entity and the target category but is also influenced by a comparison of the entity with 1 or more alternative categories from the same domain as the target. Establishing a contrast category effect on categorization in natural language categories has proven to be laborious, especially when the categories concerned are natural kinds situated at the superordinate level of abstraction. We conducted 3 studies with these categories to look for an influence on categorization of both similarity to the target category and similarity to a contrast category. The results are analyzed with a probabilistic threshold model that assumes categorization decisions arise from the placement of threshold criteria by individual categorizers along a single scale that holds the experimental stimuli. The stimuli's positions along the scale are shown to be influenced by similarity to both target and contrast. These findings suggest that the prevalence of contrast category effects on categorization might have been underestimated. Additional analyses demonstrate how the proposed model can be employed in future studies to systematically investigate the origins of contrast category effects on categorization.
当对一个实体应用类别术语的决策不仅涉及该实体与目标类别之间的比较，而且还受到该实体与来自目标类别同一领域的 1 个或多个替代类别的比较的影响时，就会出现对比类别对分类的影响。在自然语言类别中建立对比类别对分类的影响被证明是费力的，特别是当所涉及的类别是位于抽象的上位层次的自然种类时。我们对这些类别进行了 3 项研究，以寻找对分类的影响，包括与目标类别的相似性和与对比类别的相似性。结果使用概率阈值模型进行分析，该模型假设分类决策是由个体分类器沿着单个尺度放置阈值标准引起的，该尺度包含实验刺激物。刺激物沿着尺度的位置被证明受到与目标和对比的相似性的影响。这些发现表明，对比类别对分类的影响可能被低估了。额外的分析表明，如何在未来的研究中使用建议的模型来系统地研究对比类别对分类的影响的起源。
