Abstract: The ability of 18-, 24-, and 30-week-old infants to learn conceptual categories regarding adult female faces was examined using a habituation paradigm. Little evidence for conceptual categorization occurred at 18 or 24 weeks, but at 30 weeks infants learned to respond to "a specific female face regardless of orientation" and to "female faces in general."

Abstract: This study used photo (stimulus persons) to explore age categorization in a sample of 150 subjects of diverse ages: 15 males and 15 females in each of five age groups: 18--21, 22--28, 29--38, 39--55, and 56--76. Two sets of 33 photos each (a male and a female set) were presented to subjects for chronological age estimation, age categorization (as adolescent, young, middle-aged, elderly, and aged adult), and preference. Results indicated considerable overlapping of estimated ages across age categories, suggesting that the boundaries between adjacent age stages are highly permeable. Sex-of-photo exerted a major influence on categorization and preference. Female, relative to male, stimulus persons were assigned to older age categories, were perceived to attain middle-aged and elderly status sooner, and were younger when chosen as most preferred (but only for male subjects). These sex-bias effects were mitigated in the oldest respondent. Relevance of the present research to problems of age stereotyping is discussed.

Abstract: This study demonstrated a methodology of measuring information content and manipulation of nursing subject matter and suggested features of information processing nurses may use to determine the condition of patients. Subjects included 23 associate degree nurses (experts) and 37 first-year AD nursing students (novices) who sorted 59 data elements of a simulated client problem into categories. As a result, 12 categories of patient problems were identified, which were subjected to a latent partition analysis to identify common categorization. Subjects then were asked to decide on appropriate patient interventions. The two groups--experts and novices--were compared re: mean number of data elements requested, mean number of elements requested by LPA category, t test of the mean weights for each category, and rank order correlations of category emphasis. The 12 protocols were then tested for conformity to experience by nine judges. Experts were found to address more problems than novices; they placed more emphasis on current vital signs, pain, and neurological check.

Abstract: The first study investigated how the purpose for which information about a person is to be used affects the way a perceiver organizes the information. Subjects were asked to categorize and label episodes which described the behavior of a fictional person “Jill” in 64 different situations, and to summarize what each category meant to them. Half of the episodes were easily categorized according to the traits that Jill manifested, half according to features of the situations. One group (personality impression) expected later to describe Jill's personality, a second group (prediction) expected to make predictions about Jill's behavior, and a third group (recall) expected to be tested on their recall of the episodes. The results indicated that subjects in the behavior prediction group categorized the episodes primarily in terms of the personality characteristics Jill portrayed, just as the personality impression group did. In contrast, only the categories formed by the recall group paralleled the built-in structure of the episodes, i.e., they were as often based on features of the situation as on Jill's personality characteristics. A second study showed that the categorization strategies of the recall subjects actually did produce higher recall than those of the personality impression and behavior prediction subjects. The results were interpreted as suggesting that when making behavioral predictions, just as when forming impressions, the layman, like the traditional trait psychologist, prefers to organize information in terms of personality constructs rather than in a way that facilitates retrieval of everything that happened in specific situations. The cognitive costs as well as the gains produced by this strategy merit further scrutiny.

Abstract: It is a generally accepted premise of modern conversational analysis that to engage in and sustain a significant range of verbal encounters, participants must have both background information about the situation at hand and sociocultural knowledge, i.e., familiarity with the shared conventions governing the verbal categorization of the environment and the conduct of activities alluded to in the interaction. Study of the role of such extra-grammatical factors in verbal communication and their relationship to grammar has in fact become a major concern of modern research.

Abstract: The present investigation was conducted to determine whether subjects could use categorical codes based on semantic memory information (gender of names) to make rapid decisions about the order of names in a linear series. Subjects were taught linear order problems in which 12 names (six male and six female) were either randomly ordered or blocked by sex. The results support a dual-process model which proposes that subjects use both categorical information (discrete linguistic codes) and serial position information when asked to make mental comparisons of arbitrarily ordered items. Furthermore, the data indicate that both the ordinal distance between the terms in the test pair (step size) and the serial position of the test terms in the linear order affect the reaction time to a particular test comparison.

Abstract: IF THERE IS any single theme central to the concept of political socialization, it is the notion of learning. Use of the term is ubiquitous in the literature and study after study continues to augment our store of knowledge concerning who learns what, from whom, and when. Important as these considerations and contributions are, the essence of learning is process, the dynamic or dynamics involved is acquiring information, attitudes, behavior patterns, and the like. What we are concerned with, then, is another very important Laswellian sort of question-how? How does this learning take place? References to process are commonplace in the literature, but upon inspection invariably turn out to be something else, usually exercises in description and categorization. It was just this sort of deficiency which prompted Sigel to point out that the term "political socialization" as presently employed is really a misnomer since students of the subject don't actually study how learning takes place, but what it is that is learned." Similar viewpoints have been ex-

Abstract: Mediation of objective self-awareness by video feedback was hypothesized to elicit changes in self-perception. The effects of differences in locus of control and two feedback conditions on self-representation (categorization of free responses) were studied using a repeated-measures design. Internal and external subjects were videotaped with the monitor on (mediated) or off (non-mediated). Significant shifts in self-representations from categorical to attributive responses and from neutral (descriptive) to positive (evaluative) statements occurred for all subjects. No effects for locus of control were noted. Implications of video feedback for self-awareness and perception are discussed.

Abstract: Publisher Summary This chapter overviews the contribution of reaction time and visual search experiments to the understanding of how alternative classifications of stimulus materials are made in different situations Two factors will determine efficiency of performance First, there is the particular way, in which the system partitions the stimulus set to achieve a given categorization Experimental paradigms are typically designed to generate particular ways of partitioning that resemble taxonomy of experimental design A second factor, which determines efficiency in categorization tasks, is the physical evidence on which classifications are based A second possible taxonomy of stimulus classification might be based on the different kinds of relationships within and between sets of complex signals which subjects use to discriminate among them Improvement on classification tasks may be described as the gradual progression from inferior to optimal partitioning strategies, and from more to less inconvenient or redundant systems of evidence

Abstract: The value of using multivariate techniques in categorization of behaviors derived from naturalistic observations was examined. It is suggested that these techniques are superior to the traditional methods of forming categories based on a priori conceptualizations, simply correlating the measures, or leaving the categorization of a multitude of behaviors to the reader. The present study used factor analytic techniques to identify both the number and nature of dimensions of rodents' social behaviors observed in the open field. Predictions as to the relationship between these derived categories and visual behaviors were then made. It was shown that rodents' social behavior is not unidimensional and is related to visual experience. Also, the utility of using multivariate statistics for both analyzing and categorizing a large number of behaviors was shown.

Abstract: The relationship between cognition and language was explored with 4 preschool subjects who were taught a contrived grammatical rule contrasting size of visual stimuli. A match-to-sample task was pr...

Abstract: Word categorization as a function of stimulus presentation was examined by means of the Word Categorization Test, in a group of young adults. The results indicate (a) a minimal use of the phonetic similarity criterion, (b) a differential employment of semantic similarity and complementarity criteria depending upon the stimulus presentation procedure, (c) a significant sex difference, and (d) evidence of response patterning in one of the presentation conditions. The results are discussed in terms of their theoretical and methodological implications.

Abstract: To overcome problems in current ways of scoring androgyny, a new method is proposed for constructing a continuous androgyny score from the components of masculinity and femininity. The new score was shown to correlate meaningfully with its components and to differentiate according to the categorization method.

Abstract: Recent research into perceptual categorization has demonstrated that successful classification depends upon the matching of a stimulus input with a prototype representing the appropriate category. The suggestion that aesthetic responses to stimuli are mediated by the categorization process was investigated in two furniture selection tasks. In the first experiment subjects were requested to select items of furniture from a display similar to those in a set, while preference selections were obtained in the second experiment. The sets comprised items in one of three styles — Modern, Georgian or Art Nouveau — with the display made up of examples of all three. The first experiment examined the reliability of classification for the styles selected, with results indicating the existence of two distinguishable categories, represented by the Modern and Georgian sets. Further, the Georgian and Art Nouveau sets appeared to belong to a broader category, in which the Georgian items were more prototypic, that is, were better examples of this category. The results of Expt. 2 showed a marked parallelism with the data from the similarity task and supported the hypothesis that aesthetic choice reflects categorization and prototypicality.