Chapter 29 - Perceptual and Semantic Reorganization during Category Learning

• Published in: Handbook of Categorization in Cognitive Science pp. 651 - 678
• Main Authors: Goldstone, Robert L., Rogosky, Brian J., Pevtzow, Rachel, Blair, Mark
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Ltd 2005
• ISBN: 9780080446127; 0080446124
• DOI: 10.1016/B978-008044612-7/50084-6

Category learning not only depends upon perceptual and semantic representations, but also leads to the generation of these representations. This chapter discusses two series of experiments that demonstrate how categorization experience alters, rather than simply uses, descriptions of objects. In the first series, participants first learn to categorize objects on the basis of particular sets of line segments. Subsequently, they are given a perceptual part-whole judgment task. Categorization training influences the participant's part whole judgments, indicating that whole objects are more likely to be broken down into parts that are relevant during categorization. In the second series, correlations are created or broken between semantic features of word concepts. The best transfer is found between the category learning tasks that shared the same semantic organization of concepts. Together, the experiments support models of category learning that simultaneously create the elements of categorized object's descriptions and associate those elements with categories.