The current studies extend perceptual symbol systems theory to the processing of gender categorization by revealing that gender categorization recruits perceptual simulations of spatial height and size dimensions. In study 1, categorization of male faces were faster when the faces were in the "up" (i.e., higher on the vertical axis) rather than the "down" (i.e., lower on the vertical axis) posi...

In this paper we incorporate the concept of self-categorization into status characteristics theory to offer a group-based approach to status generalization. We suggest that task-groups can be understood as self-categories, and that the cognitive and motivational processes associated with psychological group formation have implications for status characteristics theory. In Study 1 self-categoriz...

Decision-boundary theories of categorization are often difficult to distinguish from exemplar-based theories of categorization. The authors developed a version of the decision-boundary theory, called the single-cutoff model, that can be distinguished from the exemplar theory. The authors present 2 experiments that test this decision-boundary model. The results of both experiments point strongly...

The categorization ability of fully connected neural network models, with either discrete or continuous Q-state units, is studied in this work in replica symmetric mean-field theory. Hierarchically correlated multistate patterns in a two level structure of ancestors and descendents (examples) are embedded in the network and the categorization task consists in recognizing the ancestors when the ...

Research and theory on categorization and conceptual structure have recently undergone two major shifts. The first shift is from the assumption that concepts have defining properties (the classical view) to the idea that concept representations may be based on properties that are only characteristic or typical of category examples (the probabilistic view). Both the probabilistic view and the cl...

There has been considerable debate in the literature about the relative merits of information processing versus dynamical approaches to understanding cognitive processes. In this article, we explore the relationship between these two styles of explanation using a model agent evolved to solve a relational categorization task. Specifically, we separately analyze the operation of this agent using ...

A largely accepted view in the categorization literature is that similarity-based reasoning is faster than theory-based reasoning. In the current study, we explored whether theorybased categorization behavior would continue to be observed when people are forced to make category decisions under time pressure. As a specific test of the theory-based view to category representation we examined the ...