Abstract: Four experiments were conducted to explore the hypothesis that in-group members perceive their own group as more variegated and complex than do out-group members (the out-group homogeneity principle). The first three experiments were designed to demonstrate this effect in a symmetric manner for both parties of the in-group-out-group dichotomy, and the fourth experiment tested one particular theoretical account of this phenomenon. In Experiments 1 and 2, men and women subjects estimated the proportion of men or women who would endorse a variety of personality/attitude items. The items were constructed to vary on the dimensions of stereotypic meaning (masculinity-femininity) and social desirability (favorable-unfavorable). It was predicted and found that outgroup members viewed a group as endorsing more stereotypic and fewer counterstereotypic items than, did in-group members. These findings were interpreted as support for the out-group homogeneity principle, and it was argued that since this effect was general across items varying in social desirability, the phenomenon was independent of traditional ethnocentrism effects. Experiment 3 asked members of three campus sororities to directly judge the degree of intragroup similarity for their own group and two other groups. Again, each group judged its own members to be more dissimilar to one another than did out-group judges. In Experiment 4 a theory was proposed suggesting that different "levels of social categorization" are used to encode in-group and out-group members' behavior and that this process could account for the perception of out-group homogeneity. It was predicted and found that men and women were more likely to remember the subordinate attributes of an in-group member than of an out-group member, which provides some evidence for the theoretical model.

Abstract: Application of heuristic solution procedures to the practical problem of project scheduling has previously been studied by numerous researchers. However, there is little consensus about their findings, and the practicing manager is currently at a loss as to which scheduling rule to use. Furthermore, since no categorization process was developed, it is assumed that once a rule is selected it must be used throughout the whole project. This research breaks away from this tradition by providing a categorization process based on two powerful project summary measures. The first measure identifies the location of the peak of total resource requirements and the second measure identifies the rate of utilization of each resource type. The performance of the rules are classified according to values of these two measures, and it is shown that a rule introduced by this research performs significantly better on most categories of projects.

Abstract: In two experiments we show that the prior presentation of a picture serves to facilitate the recognition of that picture in a tachistoscope up to 45 minutes later. Facilitation of recognition also occurred with prior presentation of a different picture with the same name. This cannot be explained items of a response bias, since the presentation of a word, which the subject read aloud, had no effect whatsoever upon the subsequent recognition of the picture. The data are interpreted in terms of a categorization stage for pictures which is completely independent of the verbal system. Data from other experimental paradigms are also examined. Our categorization model enables consistent interpretation of these data, which otherwise appear contradictory.

Abstract: Speech perception may be viewed as a phonetic categorization task in which the listener assigns incoming sounds to various phonetic categories. The present experiment tests two classes of models of phonetic categorization: (1) models in which the listener has a threshold or boundary between alternative categories vs. (2) models in which the listener compares the input to prototypical representations of the alternative phones. In a pretest, listeners located on a VOT continuum the /ga/ that they thought was prototypical. Selective adaptation was then conducted using both the selected prototype and adaptors nearer and further from the phoneme boundary. The prototype adaptor produced more adaptation than the other adaptors. This result supports a prototype-based representation for phonetic categorization; several process models using such a representation are considered.

Abstract: Subjects observed a slide and tape presentation of a political discussion group involving three men and three women. They then rated all speakers on measures of competence and completed a recall task matching up which speaker had said what. Subjects evidenced substantial prejudice toward female speakers relative to males. They also made substantial within-sex recall errors but relatively few cross-sex errors, indicating the u were organizing incoming information according to sex of the speaker; this strategy was more evident in sex-typed than androgynous individuals. However, recall errors and prejudice effects were uncorrelated, suggesting that the cognitive and affective components of stereotyping are relatively autonomous. A simple categorization model of stereotyping is challenged by these results.

Abstract: MERVIS, CAROLYN B., and MERvIs, CYNTHIA A. Leopards Are Kitty-Cats: Object Labeling by Mothers for Their Thirteen-Month-Olds. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1982, 53, 267-273. The present research was concerned with a semantic aspect of maternal speech to young children: maternal choice of object labels. It has previously been argued that adults label objects with names that denote basic level categories, regardless of the age of the listener. We hypothesized that the basic level would sometimes differ for young children and adults due to young children's limited knowledge about objects and their culturally appropriate functions. In such cases, the mother should name objects at the child-basic level, even if these names are incorrect by adult standards. In order to test this hypothesis, we observed 10 mother-13-month-old dyads as they played with a specially chosen set of toys. Predictions concerning which objects should be included in the child-basic category were based on the principles generally used to predict which category in a hierarchy will be basic. Results of an analysis of maternal object labels indicated that mothers do name objects for their 13-month-olds at the child-basic level rather than the adult-basic level. These results cannot be explained simply by reference to the child's naming behavior. The question of how the mother comes to notice differences between child and adult categorization schemes, and how she responds to these differences, was considered.

Abstract: The present set of studies explored the nature of the 7-month-old infant's perception of human voices. In Experiment I, infants learned to respond discriminatively to groups of male vs. female voices. That this was evidence of male/female categorization was supported in Experiment II, in which it was shown that infants did not learn to respond discriminatively to the same voices when they were randomly organized into “categories” containing both male and female voices. The extent to which fundamental frequency may have contributed to this male/female classification was investigated in Experiment III. The combined results of these three studies suggested that, although pitch is possibly one cue to which infants are attending when classifying these voices, it could not account fully for this ability. It remains for future research to identify other cues which may contribute to male/female categorization, as well as to investigate the developmental course of speaker recognition and classification in general.

Abstract: Describes an inductive categorization strategy for helping children develop word recognition ability. Using a third grade remedial reader as a case study, the diagnosis of a specific word recognition problem is made and defended. This is followed by a step‐by‐step description of a teaching procedure (word sort) that engages the child in actively analyzing, contrasting, and eventually internalizing the various base vowel patterns (CVC, CVCe, CVVC, etc.) in the English orthography. The article closes with some theoretical and interpretive comments that support the use of the word sort teaching strategy.

Abstract: Three experiments were conducted to understand what eliminates the symbolic distance effect for reaction times (RTs) when subjects learn that items belong to categories. Artificial city locations were judged, and artificial states served as categories. In Experiment 1, whether or not categories were presented and the amount of categorization practice were manipulated. Only those subjects who had practice categorizing cities into states showed a reduced symbolic distance effect for different-state pairs. Analyses of serial position curves indicated that categorization produced faster RTs to different-as compared with their adjacent same-state pairs and it also produced faster RTs for same-state pairs closer to the category border. The border seems to serve as an anchor and facilitates RTs. In Experiments 2a and 2b, distance judgments were made by subjects who either had or had not categorized artificial cities into states. Subjects who learned categories gave larger estimates of distance between cities belonging to different states than to cities belonging to the same state. Categorization seemed to place cities from different states farther apart in psychological space, making their locations more discriminable. This, along with the use of the category border as an anchor, might explain why categorization effects occur in this location judgment task.

Abstract: The present study was designed to investigate category acquisition (a) as a function of initial exposure to only good exemplars as opposed to exemplars varying in goodness-of-example and (b) as a function of exposure to single as opposed to multiple exemplars. This research was undertaken within the framework of the best-example theory of categorization. Severely handicapped prelinguistic children and teenagers were selected as subjects because of the extreme difficulty they experience in generalizing. Experimental control was obtained through a repeated-measures Latin square design. The data indicated that training based on 1 or more good exemplars resulted in significantly more accurate generalization than training with a range of exemplars. In fact, training with a range of exemplars did not result in generalization above chance levels. Training based on multiple good exemplars tended to lead to more accurate generalization than training based on a single good exemplar. The results are explained in the context of the best-example theory and are briefly related to teaching practices.

Abstract: An attempt has been made to analyze and categorize the problems of the deaf in today's world. The author, "a professional writer who was trained in cultural anthropology and linguistics," sets out as a reporter to describe the difficulties that the deaf have in communication, ie, the psychological factors of hereditary and environment, as well as the educational and vocational aspects. Pointing out "the main occupational categories are printing, shoe repair and tailoring, and the main vocational training received are printing, carpentry, baking, cabinet work and shoe repair," the author deplores a lack of educational benefits and communication skills received by the deaf. She believes a controversy in educational systems has damaged educational opportunities for the deaf and charges that a painful war exists between the "oral" and "manual" systems of learning, "crushing rational discussion in a vortex of passionate emotion." The author makes a noble attempt to recognize and

Abstract: A Type I incidental learning paradigm was used to examine the manner in which learning disabled children and non-learning-disabled children responded to systematic variations in the semantic elements of words. Accuracy of performance on word categorization tasks did not differentiate the two subject populations. However, the LD subjects categorized words less rapidly and recalled fewer words on a subsequent free recall task than the non-LD subjects. The results suggested that semantic encoding and retrieval processes occur with less automaticity in learning and reading disabled children. Less rapid and inefficient use of the semantic content of words appears to be a contributing factor in the reduced performance of LD children on verbal learning tasks.

Abstract: Object categories seem to have a prototypic structure: a central core of typical members and a periphery of atypical, borderline cases. Our internal concepts of categories must include representations of this prototypic structure. Given such concepts, however, people may use different processing strategies for judging membership in a category. These depend on a person's age and the demands of the categorization task. 3-, 4-, 5-yr.-old, and adult subjects were tested in three different categorization tasks with the same materials. Some of the items to be categorized were central and some were peripheral category members. For 3-yr.-olds there were strong effects of typicality on all three tasks, suggesting that these children were matching items and judging membership in a category on the basis of a wholistic process of comparison. Slightly older children and adults, however, showed differential effects of typicality across tasks, suggesting that they were using various processing strategies in different situations. In some of the tasks, older children and adults may have been using abstraction skills, and for one of the tasks adults may have been using logical classification skills.

Abstract: Shaver's (1970) defensive attribution hypothesis was tested systematically. Personal similarity, situational relevance and outcome severity were manipulated. Also studied was the importance of social categorization as a determinant of responsibility attribution bias, as an extension of ‘minimal’ intergroup studies. Seventy-six schoolboys were assigned to the cells of a 2 (categorization) ×2 (similarity) factorial design. Each subject read three accidents ostensibly involving unidentified others from the same experimental condition. Judgements of blame, situational relevance, perceived similarity and carelessness were elicited. Neither similarity nor situational relevance affected attributions, but similarity had an effect on carelessness ratings (P < 0.05). Outcome severity affected blame (P < 0.025) and carelessness (P < 0.01). Categorization had no effect. Thus, no support for the defensive attribution hypothesis nor for attributional bias based on such minimal similarity and categorization manipulations was found.

Abstract: Verbal interactions of 28 mother-child and father-child dyads in unstructured (Storytelling) and structured (Block-Sorting) tasks were examined in order to identify (a) parent-child relationships in Descriptive (D), Relational-Contextual (RC), and Categorical-Inferential (CI) categorization styles exhibited in their respective messages; and (b) the interaction structure regulating and maintaining their dyadic exchanges of D, RC, and CI messages. Correlational analyses demonstrated substantial parent-child relationships in each categorization mode in both tasks, with some indication of differential relationships as a function of sex-of-child and task structure. Process analyses of naturally occurring, sequential dyadic exchanges of D, RC, and CI categorizations revealed a systematic pattern of reciprocal or mutual adaptations to one another's input when task demands were minimal (Storytelling task), and when reciprocity was functional to task solution (Block-Sorting task). Thus, under these condit...

Abstract: Bruner’s (1966) suggestion that categorization skills are basic to a number of other cognitive operations—for example, concept formation, memory, problem solving—has been actively pursued in research with children (see Kagan & Kogan, 1970, for a review). Several recent studies have gone on to compare the classification skills of elderly persons with those of young adults (e.g., Cicirelli, 1976; Denney, 1974; Denney & Denney, 1973; Denney & Lennon, 1972; Kogan, 1974). Almost all have reported a diminished use among the elderly of classification based on conceptual category membership and an increase with age in the number of groupings in which there was no obvious similarity in the objects grouped together. These results have proceeded typically from a paradigm in which subjects are given only one opportunity to sort display material (geometric figures or pictures of familiar objects) into as many groupings as suggest themselves, but with the constraint that no single item can appear in more than one grouping.

Abstract: : In this research we examine the relationships among long-term memory (LTM) modification, attentional allocation and type of processing. The experiments test the proposal from automatic/controlled processing theory (Schneider and Shiffrin, 1977) that the modification of LTM occurs only during controlling processing and that stimuli can be automatically processed with no resulting LTM effect. Subjects in the first experiment were exposed to words while performing an intentional learning task; a semantic categorization task; a graphic categorization task; a distracting digit search task while trying to remember presented words; or a distracting task while trying to ignore the simultaneous words. In the distracting digit search conditions frequency judgments of words were at or near chance. Distractor learning for the semantic and intentional conditions was better than for graphic orienting, which was better than chance. In the second experiment, subjects were trained for approximately 5,000 trials to develop an automatic categorization response. The results showed no evidence of a frequency estimation ability and little recognition memory for words semantically categorized twenty times. The data support the hypothesis of a close connection between controlled processing and LTM storage and little if any link between automatic processing and LTM storage.

Abstract: The achievement of the goals of General Systems Theory are, in part, dependent on the development and use of a language which will facilitate relevant communication across disciplines so that struc­ tural similarities which are hidden by the use of specialists' languages can be examined. This study explores various dimensions of the language associated with GST. The major vocabulary components associated with GST were identified using four criterion. The first was designed to enumerate terms that reflected the dimensional aspects of systems terminology needed to identify systems characteristics which are isomorphic across different disciplines. The second criterion eliminated dis­ cipline-bound terms with limited applicability. The third criterion was used to specify sources used in the identification process and the fourth was designed to identify those terms considered to be major. Fifty-one major terms were identified based on data gathered from 400 articles which were randomly selected from the GST literature. Two classification schemes which categorized the major GST vocabulary components were developed. The descriptive scheme attempted to capture the essence of General Systems Theory by classifying the terms into seven categories designed to reflect the dimensions of the field. The computer-based typology used factor analysis to group the terms into nineteen categories. A comparison