Effects of categorical labels on similarity judgments: a critical evaluation of a critical analysis: comment on Noles and Gelman (2012)

Noles and Gelman (2012) attempt to critically reevaluate the claim that linguistic labels affect children's judgments of visual similarity. They report results of an experiment that used a modified version of Sloutsky and Fisher's (2004) task and conclude that "labels do not generally affect children's perceptual similarity judgments; rather, children's reliance on labels to make similarity judgments appears to be attributable to flaws in the methodological approaches used in prior studies" (p. 890). In this comment we demonstrate that these conclusions are based on inadequate analyses and reporting of statistics and are inconsistent with Noles and Gelman's own data. Instead, their data show a perfect replication of Sloutsky and Fisher (2004) and present further evidence that linguistic labels affect similarity judgment of young children.     

Relations among categorization, induction, recognition, and similarity: comment on Sloutsky and Fisher (2004)

V. M. Sloutsky and A. V. Fisher reported 5 experiments documenting relations among categorization, induction, recognition, and similarity in children as well as adults and proposed a new model of induction, SINC (similarity, induction, categorization). Those authors concluded that induction depends on perceptual similarity rather than conceptual knowledge. Despite the useful contributions of this work, there are some important limitations. The experimental designs examined a limited range of phenomena that are not the most revealing about the use of nonperceptual information. The main results involved a simple triad task, for which the SINC model's predictions are equivalent to the predictions of previous models of inductive reasoning. It is also unclear whether the SINC model can account for the observed relations between similarity and recognition. Implications for future work on induction and related cognitive activities are discussed.     

Do development and learning really decrease memory? On similarity and category-based induction in adults and children

In a recently published study, Sloutsky and Fisher [Sloutsky, V. M., & Fisher, A.V. (2004a). When development and learning decrease memory: Evidence against category-based induction in children. Psychological Science, 15, 553-558; Sloutsky, V. M., & Fisher, A. V. (2004b). Induction and categorization in young children: A similarity-based model. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 133, 166-188.] demonstrated that children have better memory for the items that they generalise to than do adults. On the basis of this finding, they claim that children and adults use different mechanisms for inductive generalisations; whereas adults focus on shared category membership, children project properties on the basis of perceptual similarity. Sloutsky & Fisher attribute children's enhanced recognition memory to the more detailed processing required by this similarity-based mechanism. In Experiment 1 we show that children look at the stimulus items for longer than adults. In Experiment 2 we demonstrate that although when given just 250ms to inspect the items children remain capable of making accurate inferences, their subsequent memory for those items decreases significantly. These findings suggest that there are no necessary conclusions to be drawn from Sloutsky & Fisher's results about developmental differences in generalisation strategy.     

Effects of categorical labels on similarity judgments: a critical analysis of similarity-based approaches

Our goal in the present study was to evaluate the claim that category labels affect children's judgments of visual similarity. We presented preschool children with discriminable and identical sets of animal pictures and asked them to make perceptual judgments in the presence or absence of labels. Our findings indicate that children who are asked to make perceptual judgments about identical items judge discriminable items less accurately when making subsequent similarity judgments. Thus, labels do not generally affect children's perceptual similarity judgments; rather, children's reliance on labels to make similarity judgments appears to be attributable to flaws in the methodological approaches used in prior studies. These results have implications for the role of perceptual and conceptual information in children's categorization and induction.     

相似和相同语言标签对幼儿归纳推理的影响

为进一步检验相似语言标签的效应,采用经典的三角属性归纳范式,通过两个实验研究了"相似/相同"的真实语言标签对4岁幼儿归纳推理的影响.在实验一中,三角范式中的三个刺激物属于同一类别,在实验二中,三个刺激物属于两种不同的类别.每个实验均有三种条件:在控制条件中,实验者用"这个"指代每个客体;在相似语言标签条件中,靶刺激与知觉不相似的比较刺激具有相同的、且暗示了类别成员关系的词素(例如,翠鸟—飞机—鸵鸟);在相同语言标签条件中,靶刺激和知觉不相似的比较刺激共享相同的语言标签(例如,鸟—飞机—鸟).结果一致显示,与控制条件相比,幼儿在相似语言标签条件下表现出了更多的基于概念的归纳,表明在真实语言标签条件下也存在相似语言标签效应.同时,研究结果也显示,幼儿在相似和相同语言标签条件下的归纳没有显著差异,说明语言标签在幼儿归纳中更可能传递了概念信息,从而挑战了Sloutsky等的理论.     

Predicting similarity judgments in intertemporal choice with machine learning

Similarity models of intertemporal choice are heuristics that choose based on similarity judgments of the reward amounts and time delays. Yet, we do not know how these judgments are made. Here, we use machine-learning algorithms to assess what factors predict similarity judgments and whether decision trees capture the judgment outcomes and process. We find that combining small and large values into numerical differences and ratios and arranging them in tree-like structures can predict both similarity judgments and response times. Our results suggest that we can use machine learning to not only model decision outcomes but also model how decisions are made. Revealing how people make these important judgments may be useful in developing interventions to help them make better decisions.     

Why learning and development can lead to poorer recognition memory

Current models of inductive reasoning in children and adults assume a central role for categorical knowledge. A recent paper by Sloutsky and Fisher challenges this assumption, showing that children are more likely than adults to rely on perceptual similarity as a basis for induction, and introduces a more direct method for examining the representations activated during induction. This method has the potential to constrain models of induction in novel ways, although there are still important challenges.     

MINERVA‐DM and subadditive frequency judgments

There is considerable evidence that frequency (and probability) judgments are often subadditive. That is, the frequency judgment assigned to an event is often less than the sum of the frequency judgments assigned to the mutually exclusive component events that together form it. Explanations for subadditive judgments have typically relied on relatively high‐level cognitive constructs such as the availability and representativeness heuristics. A lower‐level explanation of subadditivity is presented in this paper through a model of memory and judgment processes, MINERVA‐DM. Under MINERVA‐DM, subadditivity is influenced by the similarity of the representations of the judged component events in memory to one another and by the placement of decision criteria. Results from two experiments support the model predictions. The first examines the effects of component event similarity on subadditivity. The second replicates the first and also provides support for the model's prediction of the effects of payoffs on similarity criteria. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Nonmetric scaling of line lengths using latencies,similarity, and same-different judgments

An experiment investigating the relation between various ways of deriving psychophysical functions for line length is reported. A two-phase computer-controlled experiment in which the stimuli were pairs of lines was performed. In the first phase, the pair was presented for several seconds and the S was required to make a category judgment of the similarity of the lines. In the second phase, the pair was presented for a very brief period of time and the S decided whether the lines were the same or of different lengths. Three sets of data were analyzed: (1) the similarity judgments, (2) the proportion of correct different judgments, and (3) the latency of the correct different judgments. An individual differences analysis indicated that there were individual differences in the similarity and latency data. This analysis was not applicable to the proportion data. Nonmetric scaling revealed that the psychophysical functions based on all three sets of data were essentially identical     

Similarity and preference judgments of musical stimuli

Two experiments were performed comparing similarity (technical-structural) and preference personal-affective) judgments of jazz improvizations (Experiment 1) and of classical, pop-rock, and jazz music (Experiment 2). A multidimensional scaling paradigm (INDSCAL) was used for pairwise comparisons of the 12 musical pieces in each experiment. Each 2 minute piece was subdivided into 10 second segments in order to reduce fatigue or boredom and provide better sampling across comparison trials. In general, similarity dimensions reflected greater agreement among the subjects that did preference dimensions and were hierarchically ordered. The dominant dimensions for both similarity and preference judgments of jazz improvizations were: Tempo, Dominant Instrument (Horns-guitar), and Articulation. The dominant dimensions for similarity judgments involving all three genres were: Classical-Contemporary, Jazz-Rock, and Tempo. The dominant dimensions for preference judments were: Rock-Classical, Jazz-Classical, and Tempo. In general, the preference judgments of musically sophisticated subjects were less constrained by salient dimensions.     

Sources of confidence judgments in implicit cognition

Subjective reports of confidence are frequently used as a measure of awareness in a variety of fields, including artificial grammar learning. However, little is known about what information is used to make confidence judgments and whether there are any possible sources of information used to discriminate between items that are unrelated to confidence. The data reported here replicate an earlier experiment by Vokey and Brooks (1992) and show that grammaticality decisions are based on both the grammatical status of items and their similarity to study exemplars. The key finding is that confidence ratings made on a continuous scale (50%—100%) are closely related to grammaticality but are unrelated to all of the measures of similarity that were tested. By contrast, confidence ratings made on a binary scale (high vs. low) are related to both grammaticality and similarity. The data confirm an earlier finding (Tunney & Shanks, 2003) that binary confidence ratings are more sensitive to low levels of awareness than continuous ratings are and suggest that participants are conscious of all the information acquired in artificial grammar learning.     

On the similarity of features

Tversky's featural contrast model for similarity judgments is discussed and its featural definition of entities and Boolean characterization of judgments are criticized. Features are themselves identified on the basis of appraisals of similarity and so cannot be defined in an a priori or context-free manner. Tversky's model may assist the discovery of orderly psychological patterns, but misses the central cognitive issues of concern. Empirical findings relevant to this critique are reviewed. The criticisms of Tversky's model lead to a more general critique of the representational-computational model of mind and its associated methods.     

An exemplar-retrieval model of speeded same--different judgments

R. M. Nosofsky and T. J. Palmeri's (1997) exemplar-based random-walk (EBRW) model of speeded classification is extended to account for speeded same--different judgments among integral-dimension stimuli. According to the model, an important component process of same--different judgments is that people store individual examples of experienced same and different pairs of objects in memory. These exemplar pairs are retrieved from memory on the basis of how similar they are to a currently presented pair of objects. The retrieved pairs drive a random-walk process for making same--different decisions. The EBRW predicts correctly that same responses are faster for objects lying in isolated than in dense regions of similarity space. The model also predicts correctly effects of same-identity versus same-category instructions and is sensitive to observers' past experiences with specific same and different pairs of objects.     

Learned helplessness and judgments of control

One of the central hypotheses of learned helplessness theory is that exposure to noncontingency produces a reduced ability to perceive response-outcome relations (the postulated "cognitive deficit"). To test this hypothesis, subjects were exposed to a typical helplessness induction task and then asked to make judgments of the amount of control their responses exerted over a designated outcome (the onset of a light). Support for the postulated cognitive deficit would be found if subjects who experienced the induction underestimated the relation between their responses and outcomes. The results, however, demonstrated that induction subjects (n = 30) made higher and more accurate judgments of control than subjects in a no-treatment control group (n = 30). This finding clearly fails to support the postulated cognitive deficit and highlights the need for other direct tests of the basic hypotheses of helplessness theory.     

Visual judgments of kinship: an alternative perspective

Following other researchers, we investigated the premise that visual judgment of kinship might be modelled as a signal-detection task, strictly related to similar facial features. We measured subjects' response times to face-pair stimuli while they performed visual judgments of kinship, similarity, or dissimilarity, and examined some priming effects involved. Our results show that kinship judgment takes longer on average than either similarity or dissimilarity judgment-which is compatible with existing models, yet might also suggest that kinship judgments are of a more complex character. In our priming study we observed selective suppression/enhancement of the efficacy of dissimilarity judgments whenever they followed similarity and kinship judgments. This finding confounds the notion, inherent in previous models, of resemblance cues signalling for kinship, since similarity and dissimilarity cannot be considered just as opposite concepts, and observed priming effects need to be explicitly modelled, including dissimilarity cues. To model kinship judgments across faces that are perceived as dissimilar, a new framework may be required, perhaps accepting the perspective of a task-driven use of the visual cues, modulated by experience and cultural conditioning.     

Structural alignment in similarity and difference judgments

Similarity is a central construct in models of cognitive processing, and as such has been the focus of psychological inquiry. This work has revealed that similarity and difference judgments are not always inverses. One explanation for this effect is that similarity judgments focus on matching relations between the items, while difference judgments focus on the mismatching attributes. A second explanation is that both similarity and difference judgments involve a process of structural alignment, and that they use the output of this process differently. These views are contrasted by using the one-shot mapping technique that places attribute similarity and relational similarity in competition. The results suggest that similarity and difference judgments both involve structural alignment.     

Relational similarity and the nonindependence of features in similarity judgments

Four experiments examined the hypothesis that simple attributional features and relational features operate differently in the determination of similarity judgments. Forced choice similarity judgments ("Is X or Y more similar to Z?") and similarity rating tasks demonstrate that making the same featural change in two geometric stimuli unequally affects their judged similarity to a third stimulus (the comparison stimulus). More specifically, a featural change that causes stimuli to be more superficially similar and less relationally similar increases judged similarity if it occurs in stimuli that already share many superficial attributes, and decreases similarity if it occurs in stimuli that do not share as many superficial attributes. These results argue against an assumption of feature independence which asserts that the degree to which a feature shared by two objects affects similarity is independent of the other features shared by the objects. The MAX hypothesis is introduced, in which attributional and relational similarities are separately pooled, and shared features affect similarity more if the pool they are in is already relatively large. The results support claims that relations and attributes are psychologically distinct and that formal measures of similarity should not treat all types of matching features equally.     

Purity matters more than harm in moral judgments of suicide: Response to Gray (2014)

Many people judge suicide to be immoral. We have found evidence that these moral judgments are primarily predicted by people’s belief that suicide taints the soul and by independent concerns about purity. This finding is inconsistent with accounts that define morality as fundamentally based upon harm considerations. In this commentary, we respond to a critique of our finding, and we provide further support for our original conclusions. Even when applying new exclusion criteria to our data, an examination of effect sizes demonstrates that concerns about purity robustly and meaningfully explain variance in moral judgments of suicide. While harm concerns sometimes predict moral judgments of suicide alongside purity concerns, they reliably explain a much smaller proportion of the variance than do purity concerns. Therefore, data from six studies continue to suggest that the relevance of harm concerns for moral judgments of suicide is substantially overshadowed by the contribution of purity concerns.     

Reply to William R. Ferrell's paper "Calibration of sensory and cognitive judgments: A single model for both"

William R. Ferrell's paper is a reply to our article "Calibration of sensory and cognitive judgments: Two different accounts", 1993, 34, 135–148 in this journal. Ferrell's critique centres around three issues: (1) The model of sensory discrimination proposed by Björkman et al. (1993) and discussed in Winman and Juslin (1993) is not new, (2) this model does not predict underconfidence, (3) there is no need for separate models of calibration of sensory and cognitive judgments. Below we respond to each of the three issues raised by Ferrell.