The Influence of Stimulus Properties on Category Construction

It has been demonstrated that when people free classify stimuli presented simultaneously in an array, they have a preference to categorize by a single dimension. However, when people are encouraged to categorize items sequentially, they sort by "family resemblance," grouping by overall similarity. The present studies extended this research, producing 3 main findings. First, the sequential procedure introduced by G. Regehr and L. R. Brooks (1995) does not always produce a preference for family resemblance sorts. Second, sort strategy in a sequential procedure is sensitive to subtle variations in stimulus properties. Third, spatially separable stimuli evoked more family resemblance sorts than stimuli of greater spatial integration. It is suggested that the family resemblance sorting observed is due to an analytic strategy.