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

When parameters collide: a warning about categorization models.

J David Smith1

  • 1Department of Psychology, State University of New York, Buffalo, New York 14260, USA. psysmith@buffalo.edu

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review
|March 3, 2007
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

A longitudinal investigation of school absenteeism and mental health challenges among Canadian children and youth in the COVID-19 context.

Frontiers in child and adolescent psychiatry·2025
Same author

Exploring Explicit Learning Strategies: A Dissociative Framework for Research.

New ideas in psychology·2021
Same author

A Dissociative Framework for Understanding Same-Different Conceptualization.

Current opinion in behavioral sciences·2021
Same author

Conceptual anchoring dissociates implicit and explicit category learning.

Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition·2021
Same author

Launch! Self-agency as a discriminative cue for humans (Homo sapiens) and monkeys (Macaca Mulatta).

Journal of experimental psychology. General·2021
Same author

The Cognitive Architecture of Uncertainty.

Animal behavior and cognition·2020
Same journal

Mind wandering during first- and foreign-language reading.

Psychonomic bulletin & review·2026
Same journal

Lexical word processing is unaffected by rapid invisible frequency tagging in reading: Evidence from eye movements.

Psychonomic bulletin & review·2026
Same journal

Anxiety modulates voluntary attentional orienting to emotional gaze cues: Eye movements for pro- and anti-saccades.

Psychonomic bulletin & review·2026
Same journal

Faster key-press responses to front vowels than back vowels when matching heard vowels with represented vowels.

Psychonomic bulletin & review·2026
Same journal

Testing the interleaving effect without response bias: A forced-choice reevaluation of Kornell and Bjork (2008).

Psychonomic bulletin & review·2026
Same journal

The impact of social interaction on abstract concepts.

Psychonomic bulletin & review·2026
See all related articles

Mathematical models of categorization (S-C models) may not accurately reflect psychological processes. An analysis reveals their mathematical transformations cancel each other out, leading to linear output and questioning model validity.

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Science
  • Mathematical Psychology
  • Computational Neuroscience

Background:

  • Similarity-choice (S-C) models are widely used in categorization research.
  • These models employ mathematical transformations like exponential-decay similarity and choice rules.
  • A potential disconnect exists between the psychological processes modeled and the mathematical formalisms used.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To analyze the mathematical interactions within S-C models.
  • To identify potential limitations in the psychological grounding of these models.
  • To investigate the implications of model structure on output interpretation.

Main Methods:

  • Mathematical analysis of S-C model transformations.
  • Examination of the interaction between similarity functions and choice rules.

Related Experiment Videos

  • Demonstration of output linearity resulting from internal cancellations.

    • Main Results:

    • An unappreciated interaction between mathematical transformations in S-C models was identified.
    • These transformations effectively cancel each other out.
    • The model's output was shown to reflect its input linearly.

    Conclusions:

    • The cancellation phenomenon in S-C models has significant implications for their interpretation and application.
    • The findings raise questions about the psychological validity and simplification of current categorization models.
    • Internal mathematical analysis is crucial for developing more robust and psychologically grounded models.