Acta Psychologica Sinica

Abstract

A natural basis of categorization is family resemblance-grouping items with overall similarity to the prototype. However, many researches have shown that category construction was persistently based on a single dimension in an array. Regehr and Brooks (1995) observed that the tasks that encouraged the comparison of pairs of stimuli led to a classification based on the similarity of whole items. That is, the match-to-standards procedure resulted in family resemblance sorts. Nevertheless, Milton and Wills (2004) found that such a sequential procedure did not consequentially result in the preference for family resemblance sorts; moreover, the strategies for sorting construction were determined by the spatial separation of stimuli dimensions. By analyzing the results of Milton and Wills’ study, we discovered that the subjects performed more family resemblance sorts for the geometric stimuli than for the familiar natural ones, which implied that the whole perceptive characteristic of stimuli was a potential factor in category sorts. It appeared that holistic consciousness was even more important than the spatial characteristic in category construction. In this study, we investigated the effects of the holistic perception of stimuli on category construction when they were presented sequentially. The assumption was that holistic consciousness was the essential factor in category sorts. That is, people would prefer to construct categories based on single dimensions regardless of spatial integration or spatial separation when they were familiar to the stimulator and easily perceived as a whole. On the other hand, although the stimuli were integrated spatially, people would prefer the family resemblance strategy when they found that the stimulator was unfamiliar and difficult to comprehend.

Three experiments were conducted, and 150 undergraduates from the Beijing Normal University Zhuhai Campus participated in them. All the experiments presented stimuli with the match-to-standards procedure. Experiment 1 used geometric figures as materials that were meaningless to subjects. We manipulated the spatial characteristic and explored its role in the sorting strategy. Experiment 2 was the same as experiment 1, except that the stimuli were natural figures that were meaningful to subjects. Experiment 3 directly investigated the influence of holistic consciousness in the category. Both geometric (low evaluation of holistic consciousness) and natural figures (high evaluation of holistic consciousness) were presented to subjects; further, clear dimensional information was provided. All the data were analyzed using SPSS 11.5.

The results showed that the sequential procedure did not always produce a preference for family resemblance sorts, which was identical to the result obtained by Milton and Wills (2004). Second, the stimuli of spatial integration, similar to those of spatial separation, also evoked family resemblance sorts in the match-to-standards procedure, which was different from the results of Milton and Wills. Finally, we found that participants were sensitive to subtle variations in the perceptive properties of stimuli, that is, they extracted more family resemblance sorts for the stimuli of separable perception than for those of integrated perception.

We can conclude that the influence of the stimulus’ perceptive properties on people’s ability to notice different areas in an analytic strategy is so strong that they change the category construction strategies.

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