PDF(696 KB)
Feature similarity and category labels on inductive reasoning
Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2011, Vol. 34 ›› Issue (5) : 1026-1032.
PDF(696 KB)
PDF(696 KB)
Feature similarity and category labels on inductive reasoning
There are two kinds of theories in inductive reasoning: Similarity-Coverage Model (SCM, Osherson 1990) and Feature-Based Induction Model (FBIM, Sloman 1993). Two kinds of the models are based on the similarity between the base premise and the target premise. SCM model of induction is driven by two related notions: similarity and coverage and also assumes that judgments may be partially based on the similarity of the premise category to examples of the lowest level super-ordinate category that spans the premise and conclusion categories. Although parts of researchers think that FBIM relies on the notions of (feature) coverage, the central idea is that the similarity is driven by matching and mismatching features and that an argument is strong to the extent that the premise and conclusion categories share features. A distinctive property of FBIM is that it does not use category information in the sense that it does not consider different levels of categorization. Instead, it assumes that all categories are represented in terms of features and that strength of argument is based on feature overlap. Some researches suggest that category label is just a specific feature of a item. Some find that category labels can be viewed as an integrator of information. This paper is focus on whether upper- level category information affects the inductive intension. By creating a story-reading paradigm, we use category label to control upper-level category information to study effect of category labels, further we explore the category information which is activated initiatively or passively. Three experiments are used to investigate the influence of feature similarity, category labels and uncertain category labels to inductive tension respectively. We adopt One-Way-Within-Subjects design to implement three experiments. Experiment 1 shows that people tend to choose feature of high similarity between base premise and target premise in experiment. The result consists with account of SCM and FBIM. Experiment 2 shows that people tend to choose feature of category labels not feature of high similarity. It suggests that category label is not a specific feature of an item. Experiment 3 shows that category information is activated initiatively. Even though replaced by uncertain labels, people still tend to choose feature of category labels same as in experiment 2. Above results demonstrate that category label tends to play an important role on inductive reasoning. Combining previous researches, we hypothesize that inductive intension relies on two quantities: one is feature similarity, another is categorization probability.
inductive reasoning / category labels / feature similarity / reasoning
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