Eyetracking Reveals Multiple-Category Use in Induction

Category information is used to predict properties of new category members. When categorization is uncertain, people often rely on only one, most likely category to make predictions. Yet studies of perception and action often conclude that people combine multiple sources of information near-optimall...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition memory, and cognition, 2016-07, Vol.42 (7), p.1050-1067
Main Authors: Chen, Stephanie Y., Ross, Brian H., Murphy, Gregory L.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Adult
Attention - physiology
Bias
Classification
Classification (Cognitive Process)
Concept Formation
Concept Formation - physiology
Experimental psychology
Eye Movements
Eye Movements - physiology
Female
Human
Humans
Inductive Deductive Reasoning
Information processing
Information Seeking
Judgment
Judgment - physiology
Learning Strategies
Logical Thinking
Male
Measures (Individuals)
New York
Pattern Recognition, Visual - physiology
Perception - physiology
Perceptions
Photic Stimulation
Prediction
Predictions
Quantitative psychology
Reasoning
Students
Uncertainty
Undergraduate Students
Universities
Visual Stimuli
Young Adult
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Summary:Category information is used to predict properties of new category members. When categorization is uncertain, people often rely on only one, most likely category to make predictions. Yet studies of perception and action often conclude that people combine multiple sources of information near-optimally. We present a perception-action analog of category-based induction using eye movements as a measure of prediction. The categories were objects of different shapes that moved in various directions. Experiment 1 found that people integrated information across categories in predicting object motion. The results of Experiment 2 suggest that the integration of information found in Experiment 1 were not a result of explicit strategies. Experiment 3 tested the role of explicit categorization, finding that making a categorization judgment, even an uncertain one, stopped people from using multiple categories in our eye-movement task. Experiment 4 found that induction was indeed based on category-level predictions rather than associations between object properties and directions.
ISSN:0278-7393
1939-1285
DOI:10.1037/xlm0000222