An Exemplar Model of Classification in Single and Combined Categories
Fintan Costello · eScholarship (California Digital Library) · 2000
This paper describes an exemplar-based model of people's classification and typicality judgements in both single and combined categories. This model, called the diagnostic evidence model, explains the observed family resemblance structure of single categories; the productive nature of category combination; the observed overextension of typicality judgments in some combined categories; and the situations in which that overextension occurs. The model also gives a close fit to quantitative results from a representative single-category classification data-set. Models of categorisation need to explain two basic aspects of human cognition: our ability to classify items as members of single categories such as fish or cat, and our ability to classify items as members of combinations of categories such as wild cat or pet fish. A successful model should account for the graded structure of classification in single categories: the fact that people's judgements of membership typicality fo...