Goldstone R L
Psychology Department, Indiana University, Bloomington 47405.
Cognition. 1994 Aug;52(2):125-57. doi: 10.1016/0010-0277(94)90065-5.
The relation between similarity and categorization has recently come under scrutiny from several sectors. The issue provides an important inroad to questions about the contributions of high-level thought and lower-level perception in the development of people's concepts. Many psychological models base categorization on similarity, assuming that things belong in the same category because of their similarity. Empirical and in-principle arguments have recently raised objections to this connection, on the grounds that similarity is too unconstrained to provide an explanation of categorization, and similarity is not sufficiently sophisticated to ground most categories. Although these objections have merit, a reassessment of evidence indicates that similarity can be sufficiently constrained and sophisticated to provide at least a partial account of many categories. Principles are discussed for incorporating similarity into theories of category formation.
相似性与分类之间的关系最近受到了多个领域的审视。这个问题为探讨高层思维和低层感知在人们概念发展中的作用提供了一个重要切入点。许多心理学模型将分类建立在相似性的基础上，假定事物因其相似性而属于同一类别。最近，基于经验和原理的论证对这种联系提出了异议，理由是相似性过于无拘无束，无法解释分类，而且相似性不够精细，不足以支撑大多数类别。尽管这些异议有其合理性，但对证据的重新评估表明，相似性可以受到充分的限制且足够精细，至少能部分解释许多类别。文中讨论了将相似性纳入类别形成理论的原则。
