Abstract
In two experiments, we examined the representation, treatment, and attention devoted to the members of reference (i.e., club members) and nonreference (i.e., not club members) categories. Consistent with prior work on category interrelatedness (e.g., Goldstone, 1996 ; Goldstone, Steyvers, & Rogosky, 2003), the findings reveal the existence of asymmetric representations for reference and nonreference categories, which, however, decreased as expertise and familiarity with the categories increased (Experiments 1 and 2). Participants also more readily judged two reference exemplars as being the same than they did two nonreference exemplars (Experiment 1) and were better at detecting reference than nonreference exemplars in a set of novel, category-unspecified exemplars (Experiment 2). These findings provide evidence for the existence of a feature asymmetry in the representation and treatment of exemplars from reference and nonreference categories. Membership in a reference category acts as a salient feature, thereby increasing the perceived similarity and detection of faces that belong in the reference, in comparison with the nonreference, category.
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This research was funded in part by FNRS Grant 1.5100.03F awarded to the first author, and in part by NSF Grant 0125287 to the second author.
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Corneille, O., Goldstone, R.L., Queller, S. et al. Asymmetries in categorization, cerceptual discrimination, and visual search for reference and nonreference exemplars. Memory & Cognition 34, 556–567 (2006). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03193579
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03193579