Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Experiment Videos

Theory-based categorization under speeded conditions.

Christian C Luhmann1, Woo-Kyoung Ahn, Thomas J Palmeri

  • 1Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA. christian.luhmann@yale.edu

Memory & Cognition
|November 30, 2006
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Related Concept Videos

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

Calibrating growth mindset about intelligence: Increased blame, effort misperception, and a genes-and-growth solution for blame.

Journal of experimental psychology. General·2026
Same author

Capturing Human Cognitive Styles with Language: Towards an Experimental Evaluation Paradigm.

Proceedings of the conference. Association for Computational Linguistics. North American Chapter. Meeting·2025
Same author

Modeling the dynamics of real-world perceptual expertise.

Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition·2025
Same author

Judgment in the presence of multiple conflicting anchors.

Acta psychologica·2024
Same author

How is emotional evidence from multiple sources used in perceptual decision making?

Psychophysiology·2024
Same author

Manipulating and measuring variation in deep neural network (DNN) representations of objects.

Cognition·2024
Same journal

Music enhances associative generalization: Evidence from a memory integration task.

Memory & cognition·2026
Same journal

Video, text, and memory: An emotional verbal overshadowing effect.

Memory & cognition·2026
Same journal

Limited protective effects of multilingualism against age-related cognitive decline.

Memory & cognition·2026
Same journal

Validation of illustrated texts: Can pictures raise awareness of inconsistencies?

Memory & cognition·2026
Same journal

4I remember (and forget) your happy smiling face: Directed forgetting of emotionally expressive faces of in-group and out-group members.

Memory & cognition·2026
Same journal

Identity in the spotlight: Matching faces without overlapping features.

Memory & cognition·2026
See all related articles

Categorization speed depends on process complexity, not knowledge type. Both causal and base-rate information, once learned, are used similarly fast in categorization tasks.

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Decision Making
  • Human Cognition

Background:

  • Traditional views suggest similarity drives rapid categorization, while theories guide slower judgments.
  • This study challenges the notion that knowledge type dictates categorization speed.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate whether categorization process complexity, rather than knowledge type, influences judgment speed.
  • To examine the interplay between causal knowledge, base-rate information, and categorization speed.

Main Methods:

  • Two experiments were conducted where participants learned four categories with causally related features.
  • Participants' judgments were analyzed under speeded response conditions.
  • The weighting of cause versus effect features was assessed.

Related Experiment Videos

Main Results:

  • Participants consistently prioritized causal features over effect features, even under time pressure.
  • Judgment times were comparable whether participants utilized causal knowledge or base-rate information.
  • This indicates that precompiled knowledge, regardless of type, can be accessed rapidly.

Conclusions:

  • Categorization speed is primarily determined by the complexity of the cognitive processes involved.
  • Both causal and base-rate information, once learned, function as parallel knowledge systems accessible at similar speeds.
  • This finding offers a new perspective on how different types of knowledge contribute to categorization.