Why do categorization effects occur in comparative judgment tasks?

Abstract

Three experiments were conducted to understand what eliminates the symbolic distance effect for reaction times (RTs) when subjects learn that items belong to categories. Artificial city locations were judged, and artificial states served as categories. In Experiment I, whether or not categories were presented and the amount of categorization practice were manipulated. Only those subjects who had practice categorizing cities into states showed a reduced symbolic distance effect for different-state pairs. Analyses of serial position curves indicated that categorization produced faster RTs to different-as compared with their adjacent same-state pairs and it also produced faster RTs for same-state pairs closer to the category border. The border seems to serve as an anchor and facilitates RTs. In Experiments 2a and 2b, distance judgments were made by subjects who either had or had not categorized artificial cities into states. Subjects who learned categories gave larger estimates of distance between cities belonging to different states than to cities belonging to the same state. Categorization seemed to place cities from different states farther apart in psychological space, making their locations more discriminable. This, along with the use of the category border as an anchor, might explain why categorization effects occur in this location judgment task.When people compare two objects on some dimension in memory, several effects are usually observed. One of these has been referred to as a symbolic distance effect (Moyer & Bayer, 1976). The farther apart two objects are on a dimension, the faster the subject can respond. When items have been learned as explicit linear orders, reaction times (RTs) to pairs of stimuli plotted as a function of the distance of one of the pair members from an endpoint results in a bow-shaped serial position curve (e.g., Maki, 1981;Pliske & Smith, 1979;Woocher, Glass, & Holyoak, 1978). Congruity effects also occur in many studies (e.g., Kosslyn, Murphy, Bemesderfer, & Feinstein, 1977;Maki, 1981). Pairs near the end of one dimension are responded to faster with the comparative that corresponds to that end of the dimension than with the other comparative. For example, large items are responded to faster with "larger than" than with "smaller than." In addition to these effects, recent evidence has been found for categorization effects in comparative judgment tasks. If two objects belong to different discrete categories, the symbolic distance effect may not be observed and the serial position curves may show a dip at the category border. The present experiments were designed to investigate such categorization effects.An early demonstration of categorization effects can be found in an experiment by Kosslyn et al. (1977). They had subjects learn names for stick figures of different sizes. Some subjects also learned that the figures Appreciation is expressed to Kim Haroldson for testing some of the subjects in Experiment 1. Requests for reprints should be addressed to Ruth H. Maid, Department of ...

Social influences on spatial memory

“…In essence, social bonds functioned to mitigate the distancing effect of spatial boundaries by bringing two locations closer together, psychologically speaking. This finding fits with the results of existing work on judgments for between-and within-boundary estimations (Hirtle & Jonides, 1985;Maki, 1982;McNamara, 1986;.…”

“…For example, Stevens and Coupe (1978) demonstrated that perceptual boundaries (e.g., state borders) promoted use of categorical knowledge; judgments about the relative location of cities relied on knowledge about the relative locations of the states containing the cities. Locations that share membership in a superordinate region are perceived to be more similar to one another and more distinct from locations not sharing such membership, regardless of their own specific characteristics (Hirtle & Jonides, 1985;Maki, 1982;McNamara, 1986;. These findings suggest that spatial-learning goals and an environment's spatial and perceptual features impact the content and structure of spatial mental representations.…”

“…In this task, taken from the spatial cognition literature (e.g., McNamara, 1986), participants saw the names of two locations and estimated the distance between them. Perceptual boundaries that divide and organize neighbor-r r hoods are known to affect distance estimates (McNamara et al, 1984), as do conceptual spatial boundaries, such as the state affiliations of cities (Maki, 1982). The novel issue addressed here was whether social information affects distance estimates.…”

Seeing the Forest or the Trees? Shifting Categorical Effects in Map Memory

“…Studies examining category effects on spatial memory have generally used Euclidean (straight-line) distance estimation or relative direction judgments (Maki, 1982;Hirtle & Jonides, 1985;Hirtle & Mascolo, 1986;Hirtle & Kallman, 1988;McNamara & LeSueur, 1989;McNamara et al, 1992;Hommel et al, 2000;Friedman & Montello, 2006). Such tasks emphasize the global (e.g., bird's-eye) relation between locations in that they can be accomplished efficiently by retrieving an allocentric overview of an environment.…”

Magnitude comparison extended: How lack of knowledge informs comparative judgments under uncertainty.

“…(c) Categorical knowledge and categorical inference-Complex realworld knowledge is often categorical in nature, and there is ample evidence that categorical information plays an important role in both estimation and paired-comparison tasks (e.g., Brown & Siegler, 1991;A. Friedman & Brown, 2000a, 2000bMaki, 1981Maki, , 1982Sailor & Shoben, 1996). Categorical knowledge seems to be particularly relevant in judgments about attributes of countries (W. J.…”