Identification and Categorization of Multidimensional Stimuli

这项研究将研究人们如何学习对物体进行分类，以及类别如何在记忆中表现出来。该研究将以数学模型的持续发展和测试为指导，即范例模型，将分类决策基于呈现对象和存储范例之间的相似性比较的观点形式化。该研究将涉及研究分类与人们经常被要求执行的其他选择任务之间的绩效关系，包括识别和识别。在分类任务中，人们将物品分类成组；在识别任务中，每个项目被分配一个唯一的响应；在识别任务中，人们只是判断物品是新的还是旧的。范例模型和另一类基于规则的分类模型对涉及三个选择任务的实验结果之间的关系做出了不同的预测。因此，实验应该有助于区分这两种理论。伴随实验的理论研究将旨在阐明刺激偏差和不对称相似关系的本质。分类的过程是最基本的心理活动之一。它使人们能够为他们的环境带来秩序和组织，它是推理、思考和解决问题等更复杂的认知活动的基石。对分类过程的本质有一个清晰的认识，将有助于我们对人类思维的理解。

This research will study how people learn to classify objects and how categories are represented in memory. The research will be guided by the continued development and testing of a mathematical model, the exemplar model, formalizing the view that classification decisions are based on similarity comparisons between presented objects and stored exemplars. The research will involve the study of performance relations between categorization and other choice tasks people are often asked to perform, including identification and recognition. In the categorization task, people classify items into groups; in the identification task, each item is assigned a unique response; in the recognition task, people simply judge whether items are old or new. The exemplar model and another class of model, rule- based classification models, make different predictions about the relationships among results of experiments involving the three choice tasks. Therefore, the experiments should help to distinguish between these two kinds of theories. Theoretical research accompanying the experimentation will be aimed at elucidating the nature of stimulus bias and asymmetric similarity relations. The process of categorization is among the most fundamental of mental activities. It allows people to bring order and organization to their environment, and it is a building block of more complex cognitive activities such as reasoning, thinking, and problem solving. A clear understanding of the nature of categorization processes will be instrumental in advancing our understanding of human thought.