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Updated: Jul 22, 2026

Creating Objects and Object Categories for Studying Perception and Perceptual Learning
Published on: November 2, 2012
PET evidence for multiple strategies of categorization
A L Patalano1, E E Smith, J Jonides
1University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA. patalano@uiuc.edu
Abstract:
It is widely held that people use multiple strategies to categorize their experiences in the world. We conducted a pair of neuroimaging experiments to identify the neural correlates of two of these strategies--rule application and exemplar similarity. Participants were instructed to perform either a rule- or an exemplar-based categorization task while changes in cerebral blood flow were measured using positron emission tomography. Patterns of neural activity were consistent with the predictions of cognitive models of rule-versus exemplar-based categorization and with existing neuroscience data. The identification of strategy-specific neural patterns offers future researchers a diagnostic tool for assessing strategy use in other situations.
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