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Related Experiment Videos

Categorical perception effects induced by category learning

K R Livingston1, J K Andrews, S Harnad

  • 1Department of Psychology, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York 12604, USA. livingst@vassar.edu

Journal of Experimental Psychology. Learning, Memory, and Cognition
|June 2, 1998
PubMed
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Learning simple or complex categories does not induce categorical perception effects seen in innate perception. Studies found within-category compression but not between-category expansion, suggesting category learning alters similarity spaces.

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive psychology
  • Perception science
  • Machine learning

Background:

  • Categorical perception, observed in innate processing of stimuli like color and phonemes, involves perceptual shifts across category boundaries.
  • Previous research suggests similar effects might occur during learned categorization, but evidence has been limited.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate whether learning simple unidimensional and complex multidimensional categories induces categorical perception effects.
  • To determine if within-category compression and between-category expansion occur during category learning.

Main Methods:

  • Series of experiments using unidimensional and multidimensional stimuli, including object pictures.
  • Multidimensional scaling (MDS) analyses to examine changes in similarity space.

Related Experiment Videos

  • Comparison with existing studies and neural network simulations.

    • Main Results:

    • Experiment 1 found no categorical perception effects for unidimensional stimuli.
    • Experiments 2 and 3 showed within-category compression but no between-category expansion for two-dimensional stimuli.
    • Experiment 4 replicated within-category compression with object stimuli.
    • MDS analyses demonstrated that within-category compression alone drove categorical clustering and altered the dimensional structure of similarity space.

    Conclusions:

    • Category learning, unlike innate perception, primarily induces within-category perceptual compression.
    • Learned categorization modifies the internal representation of stimulus similarity without necessarily creating sharp perceptual boundaries.
    • Findings contribute to understanding the mechanisms of perceptual learning and its differences from innate perceptual organization.