Wills, A.J., Reimers, Stian, Stewart, Neil, 1974-, Suret, Mark and McLaren, I.P.L. (2000) Tests of the ratio rule in categorization. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. Section A: Human Experimental Psychology, Vol.53 (No.4). pp. 983-1011. ISSN 0272-4987

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Abstract

Many theories of learning and memory (e.g. connectionist, associative, rational, exemplar-based) produce psychological magnitude terms as output (i.e. numbers representing the momentary level of some subjective property). Many theories assume that these numbers may be translated into choice probabilities via the Ratio Rule, a.k.a. the Choice Axiom (Luce, 1959) or the Constant-Ratio Rule (Clarke, 1957). We present two categorization experiments employing artificial, visual, prototype-structured stimuli constructed from twelve symbols positioned on a grid. The Ratio Rule is shown to be incorrect for these experiments, given the assumption that the magnitude terms for each category are univariate functions of the number of category-appropriate symbols contained in the presented stimulus. A connectionist winner-take-all model of categorical decision (Wills & McLaren, 1997) is shown to account for our data given the same assumption. The central feature underlying the success of this model is the assumption that categorical decisions are based on a Thurstonian choice process (Thurstone, 1927, Case V) whose noise distribution is not double exponential in form.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology
Divisions:	Faculty of Science > Psychology
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Learning, psychology of, Memory -- Psychological aspects, Axiom of choice
Journal or Publication Title:	Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. Section A: Human Experimental Psychology
Publisher:	Psychology Press
ISSN:	0272-4987
Date:	November 2000
Volume:	Vol.53
Number:	No.4
Page Range:	pp. 983-1011
Identification Number:	10.1080/02724980050156263
Status:	Peer Reviewed
Access rights to Published version:	Restricted or Subscription Access
Funder:	Economic and Social Research Council (Great Britain) (ESRC), Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (Great Britain) (BBSRC)
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URI:	http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/id/eprint/600

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