Cross-category structure in semantic memory

Herrmann, Douglas J.; Shoben, Edward Joseph; Klun, Joseph R.; Smith, Edward E.

doi:10.3758/bf03198222

Cited by 14 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…Ofthese three, one was related, one was slightly related, and one was unrelated to the target category. Relatedness of false categories was taken from data published by Herrmann, Shoben, Klun, and Smith (1975), who had subjects perform a clustering-bysimilarity task on the 56 categories used by Battig and Montague. For example, for the category Clothing, the related false items were from the category Footwear, whereas for Food Flavorings, the related false items were drawn from the Alcoholic Beverages category.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Associative and similarity-based processes in categorization decisions

Hampton

1997

Memory & Cognition

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Two experiments were directed at distinguishing associative and similarity-based accounts of systematic differences in categorization time for different items in natural categories. Experiment 1 investigated the correlation of categorization time with three measures of instance centrality in a category. Production frequency (PF), rated typicality, and familiarity from category norms for British participants (Hampton & Gardiner, 1983) were used to predict mean categorization times for 531words in 12 semantic categories. PF and typicality (but not familiarity) were found to make significant and independent contributions to categorization time. Error rates were related only to typicality (apart from errors made to ambiguous or unknown items). Experiment 2 provided a further dissociation of PF and typicality. Manipulating the difficulty of the task through the relatedness of the false items interacted primarily with the effect of typicality on categorization time, whereas, under conditions of easy discrimination, prior exposure to the category exemplars affected only the contribution of PF to the decision time. The dissociation of typicality and PF measures is interpreted as providing evidence that speeded categorization involves both retrieval of associations indexed by PF and a similarity-based decision process indexed by typicality.The phenomenon of gradedness within categories is the finding that some instances of common taxonomic categories (e.g., robin as a bird) are consistently judged as more typical or representative of their categories than are others (Barsalou, 1985;Hampton, 1979;Rosch, 1975). Typical instances have been shown to receive preferential processing in a wide range of cognitive tasks (for a review, see Hampton, 1993). For example, in a speeded categorization task, typical words are categorized more rapidly and more accurately than are atypical words (Hampton, 1979;Smith, Shoben, & Rips, 1974). Typical instances also tend to be generated with a high production frequency when people are asked to retrieve examples of categories from memory (Battig & Montague, 1969;Hampton & Gardiner, 1983;Mervis, Catlin, & Rosch, 1976).There are two fundamentally different ways of interpreting gradedness effects in common taxonomic categories. One is in terms of the learning history of the individual, and it proposes that "good" category members are those that have been most often associated with the category in the past. For example, nonanalytic models of category learning and concept representation (e.g., Brooks, 1978Brooks, , 1987 would emphasize the importance of past associations in determining speed of categorization. The other interpretation is in terms of what Rosch (1975) The author thanks Larry Barsalou, John Gardiner, Margaret Gardiner, David Green, Frank Keil, Robert Lorch, Michael McCloskey, and anonymous reviewers for comments and suggestions on the research, and Andy Ojukwu and Bill Fitzpatrick for assistance in data collection. Correspondence should be addressed to the author at the Psychology De...

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Associative and similarity-based processes in categorization decisions

Hampton

1997

Memory & Cognition

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“…However, the results are also consistent with what Collins and Quillian call "semantic relatedness." Similarly, in an investigation of the relations between category labels, Herrmann, Shoben, Klun, and Smith (1975) report that the distances between category terms, as measured in a hierarchical clustering analysis, predict reaction times in a same-different paradigm. In general, wherever measured, latency and similarity have been related.…”

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confidence: 99%

Similarity as distance: A structural principle for semantic memory.

Hutchinson¹,

Lockhead²

1977

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory

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A review of some recent experiments suggested that general similarity between words might successfully function as a structural principle for semantic memory. A spatial model based on that assumption is proposed. Reaction times were taken as 16 observers judged which of two words was more similar to a third word. The results, which are consistent for two different categories of words and for two different methods of collecting similarity data, show that the Weber-Fechner effect exists for discriminations between semantic distances. A priming effect was also demonstrated, and both results are shown to be consistent with the spatial model. The relation of this model to network and set-theoretic models of semantic memory is discussed, as is the relation of this model for semantic memory to a model for form discrimination. It is suggested that a general spatial model approach, with few restrictions placed on the data, can account for much of the existing data on semantic memory and on perceptual discrimination and that this model might be a fruitful approach to the study of semantic relatedness.

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“…Specifically, when the facilitating effect of semantic relatedness on the wordidentification stage exceeds its negative effect on the similarity-comparison stage, semantic relatedness will enhance the judgment of non-synonym pairs. This result would represent a reversal of traditional findings (Herrmann et al, 1975;Herrmann et al, 1978;Rips et al, 1973).…”

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confidence: 43%

“…Similarly, correct "no" responses were faster for unrelated non-synonym pairs when those pairs of items were rated as less similar in the rating task. (See Rips et al, 1973, andHerrmann et al, 1975, for analogous results in categorization tasks.…”

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confidence: 84%

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Examining the role of word identification in synonymy judgment

Hirshman¹,

Master²

1997

Psychol. Res

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This paper examines the role of word identification in semantic judgment tasks. We argue that word-identification processes can substantially alter the functional properties of semantic judgment tasks. We investigate this empirically by examining the effects of semantic relatedness and relatedness proportion on synonymy judgments of non-synonym pairs. The resuits demonstrate that semantic relatedness slows synonymy judgments for non-synonym pairs when the relatedness proportion is low, but speeds them when the relatedness proportion is high. The former effect is a replication of traditional findings, while the latter effect reverses these findings. We explain these results by hypothesizing that increasing the relatedness proportion increases the beneficial effects of semantic relatedness in word identification, and this produces the reversal of traditional findings. We close by emphasizing that models of semantic judgment tasks can become more comprehensive by focusing on word identification.

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Cross-category structure in semantic memory

Cited by 14 publications

References 12 publications

Associative and similarity-based processes in categorization decisions

Associative and similarity-based processes in categorization decisions

Similarity as distance: A structural principle for semantic memory.

Examining the role of word identification in synonymy judgment

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