Abstract
How do people categorize an object into artifact domain? Many researchers consider creators intended design (Bloom, 1996) to be a mediate variable between the final judgment and many single factors, such as objects history (Gelman and Bloom 2000), plausibility of objects function (Asher and Kemler Nelson, 2008), and creators label to the object (Jaswal 2006). As an alternative theory, the utility-based view (Sun and Fu 2005) postulates that using-goal is the mediate variable instead of creators design. This view predicts that if subjects consider them as users rather than viewers of an object, the object would be named as an artifact because its functional information would be strongly activated.
We used a short-depiction-based object free naming task to test the above hypothesis (see Sun, Wang, and Fu, 2006). More than 160 subjects were randomly assigned to one of four experiment groups. A 2 (pronoun in functional depiction: You vs. someone used the object) × 2 (objects history: naturally-formed vs. not mentioned) between-subject design was used. In a 7-page booklet we described 6 objects (one object per page) plus a cover page. Subjects were asked to read the depictions and write down their naming, confidence rating, and naming reasons for each object.
The results showed an interesting interaction between pronoun and objects history. At the someone condition, subjects significantly less named objects into artifact domain when the object history was naturally-formed than not mentioned. But at you condition such difference disappeared. Besides, subjects in both conditions named object into artifact domain no matter whether the object was formed naturally or not and their confidence ratings were at the same level. Finally, functional properties of objects were more listed as naming reasons in You condition than in Someone condition.
Current findings suggest that objects function mediates objects history and category judgment. Based on this, we further discussed artifact concept categorization from the utility-based perspective.
Keywords: | artifact; categorization; design; intent; function |
---|
[Chinese Version | Index | Acta Psychologica Sinica | Other Journals | Subscription form | Enquiry ]