Relational properties and memory-based category construction

Although many experiments have investigated factors that constrain perceptual category construction, there have been no investigations of factors that constrain memory-based (MB) category construction. Six experiments examined the extent to which perceptual and MB sorting were influenced by correlated dimensions, family resemblance principles, and conceptual knowledge. Sensitivity to many types of relational information (e.g., correlated features, causal relations, interactive properties of objects, and family resemblance relations) was observed with perceptual sorting, but these properties were rarely used to organize information in MB sorting conditions. Instead, there was a clear preference to organize categories around single dimensions. Even when perfectly correlated features were causally related, Ss in memory conditions did not use correlations to construct categories. The strengths and limitations of MB analyses and categorizations are discussed.