Range-frequency effects can explain and eliminate prevalence-induced concept change
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Updated: Sep 20, 2025

Comparing the Frequency Effect Between the Lexical Decision and Naming Tasks in Chinese
Published on: April 1, 2016
1Harvard Business School, Boston, MA, United States of America; Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, United States of America.
Abstract:
Why would concepts seem to grow when their instances become rare? Human observers can respond to decreases in stimulus prevalence by expanding their conceptual boundaries of those stimuli. This prevalence-induced concept change may have serious social consequences, since many real-world detection tasks demand consistent judgments over time. The current work aims to identify the computational process that produces prevalence-induced concept change. I review some plausible models from the cognitive and social sciences that could account for this phenomenon, and then use trial-level computational modeling to see how well each model predicts actual human data, finding that they are best explained as a range-frequency compromise in judgment. Finally, I test an intervention that successfully eliminates prevalence-induced concept change by making stimuli more intense as they become rare.
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