Absence of cross-modality analogical transfer in perceptual categorization

Abstract

Analogical transfer has been previously reported to occur between rule-based, but not information-integration, perceptual category structures (Casale, Roeder, & Ashby, 2012). The current study investigated whether a similar pattern of results would be observed in cross-modality transfer. Participants were trained on either a rule-based structure, or an information-integration structure, using visual stimuli. They were then tested on auditory stimuli that had the same underlying abstract category structure. Transfer performance was assessed relative to a control group who did not receive training on the visual stimuli. No cross-modality transfer was found, irrespective of the category structure employed.

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“…In a similar vein, there is no evidence that participants use different types of stimulus representation depending on the category structure (for partial reviews see Newell et al, 2011;Wills et al, 2019). Participants report using rule-based strategies in both simple and complex categorisation tasks (Edmunds et al, 2015(Edmunds et al, , 2019(Edmunds et al, , 2020. For instance they may categorise using a single attribute or perhaps generate more complex rules (such as conjunctions or other combinations of single dimension rules).…”

“…Rather, studies have investigated the category structure changing over time (for instance at the beginning of the experiment the participant needed to focus on size, later they needed to focus on orientation). Some have looked at analogical transfer where participants are first trained on one category structure and then in a second phase, they must transfer this knowledge to another set of stimuli, outside of the range of the training stimuli (Casale et al, 2012; Edmunds et al, 2020; Soto & Ashby, 2019; Zakrzewski et al, 2018). Helie et al (2015) looked at categorisation performance after the category structure was changed (see also Cantwell et al, 2015).…”

“…Navarro et al (2013) examined whether people could learn a unidimensional ‘height’ category structure where the category boundary slowly changed over time. Generally, these studies show that people are poor at these tasks: participants are slow to adapt (Navarro et al, 2013), do not take advantage of previously acquired knowledge (Edmunds et al, 2020), or may even fail to notice the change (Cantwell et al, 2015; Helie et al, 2015).…”

“…The laboratory evidence suggests that it is unlikely that operators will use all available data in their categorisation decisions (e.g. Edmunds et al, 2020; Wills et al, 2015). Rather, they are likely to focus on a subset of the available information, probably that which they found worked on previous occasions (Liebhaber et al, 2000; Matthews et al, 2009).…”