Categorization in Judgments of Relative Magnitude

Shoben, Edward Joseph; Wilson, Thomas L.

doi:10.1006/jmla.1997.2534

Cited by 14 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…The findings in the current set of experiments support a categorization account of mental comparisons (Cech & Shoben, 1985;Cech et al, 1990;Shoben et al, 1989;Shoben & Wilson, 1998; see This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 77%

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Categorization processes in mental comparisons.

Čech

Shoben²

2001

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

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Five experiments explore categorization and category-based congruity effects in mental comparisons. The first 4 experiments concentrate on categorization of infinite-set small items. The experiments vary the additional items presented and whether those items appear once (Experiments 1-2) or repeatedly (Experiments 3-4). Additional items include other small items (Experiment 1), relatively large items (Experiments 2-4), and items involving nonsize dimensions (Experiment 4). The critical small items show a complete congruity effect only in Experiments 1 and 3. Results suggest that categorization of infinite-set items may be based on range information alone (Experiment 1) but that multiple categorizations based on multiple ranges (Experiment 2) may require attentional effort. Results implicate categorization as a central process in mental comparison, despite differences in ease of categorization across paradigm.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 77%

“…More direct evidence for the importance of categorization in understanding the bowed serial-position effect may be found in Shoben and Wilson (1998). Consistent with the claim of Shoben et al (1989), they demonstrated that the time to characterize a small item as small correlated with the item's size.…”

supporting

confidence: 67%

Categorization processes in mental comparisons.

Čech

Shoben²

2001

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

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“…As mentioned earlier, one possibility is that salient near comparisons may have reflected extreme positions on the target dimension, whereas nonsalient near comparisons reflected more intermediate positions on the dimension. As mentioned earlier, extreme pairs tend to be responded to more quickly than intermediate pairs (Č ech & Shoben, 2001;Moyer & Dumais, 1978;Shoben & Wilson, 1998). Thus, the interaction revealed in Experiments 1 and 3A might have been due to salient near pairs being facilitated because they fell at the extreme of their dimensions (cf.…”

Section: The Distance Effectmentioning

confidence: 73%

Revisiting the picture-superiority effect in symbolic comparisons: Do pictures provide privileged access?

Amrhein

McDaniel

Waddill

2002

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

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In 4 experiments, symbolic comparisons were investigated to test semantic-memory retrieval accounts espousing processing advantages for picture over word stimuli. In Experiment 1, participants judged pairs of animal names or pictures by responding to questions probing concrete or abstract attributes (texture or size, ferocity or intelligence). Per pair, attributes were salient or nonsalient concerning their prerated relevance to animals being compared. Distance (near or far) between attribute magnitudes was also varied. Pictures did not significantly speed responding relative to words across all other variables. Advantages were found forfar attribute magnitudes (i.e., the distance effect) and salient attributes. The distance effect was much less for salient than nonsalient concrete-attribute comparisons. These results were consistently found in additional experiments with increased statistical power to detect modality effects. Our findings argue against dual-coding and some common-code accounts of conceptual attribute processing, urging reexamination of the assumption that pictures confer privileged access to long-term knowledge.

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“…Previous research demonstrated that several factors attenuate the symbolic distance effect. Some of these accounts emphasized the use of discrete magnitude categories (Kosslyn et aI., 1977;Shoben & Wilson, 1997), while others proposed the possibility that relative magnitude was directly retrieved (Holyoak et aI., 1979). In both cases, we argue that it is quite likely that this information is processed in parallel with processes that compute relative magnitude from absolute magnitude information.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of part—whole information in reasoning about relative size

Sailor

Shoben

2000

Mem Cogn

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Models of comparative judgment have assumed that relative magnitude is computed from knowledge about absolute magnitude rather than retrieved directly. In Experiment 1, participants verified the relative size of part-whole pairs (e.g., tree-leaf) and unrelated controls (e.g., tree-penny). The symbolic distance effect was much smaller for part-whole pairs than for unrelated controls. In two subsequent experiments, participants determined either which of two objects was closer in size to a third object or which of two pairs had a greater difference in the size of its constituents. In contrast to the paired comparison task in Experiment 1,judgments of part-whole items were more sensitive to the influence of symbolic distance than were unrelated controls. The fact that the part-whole relation attenuates the effects of symbolic distance in a paired comparison task but not in tasks that require an explicit comparison of size differences suggests that the part-whole relation provides a source of information about relative magnitude that does not depend on knowledge about absolute magnitude.Much of our general world knowledge is knowledge about objects and their attributes. For example, the fact that coffee is darker than milk, that monkeys are smarter than dogs, or that ordering dinner requires much less time than calculating one's taxes can serve to distinguish each ofthese objects or events. An important topic in research on semantic memory is how people represent knowledge about the properties and attributes of objects and events and then use this knowledge to make these relational judgments.

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Categorization in Judgments of Relative Magnitude

Cited by 14 publications

References 25 publications

Categorization processes in mental comparisons.

Categorization processes in mental comparisons.

Revisiting the picture-superiority effect in symbolic comparisons: Do pictures provide privileged access?

The role of part—whole information in reasoning about relative size

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