title: The use of category and similarity information in limiting hypotheses.
abstract: Previous studies have shown that adults usually select diverse evidence for generalizing hypotheses. We investigated what kind of evidence people select in another type of inductive task: limiting hypotheses. Whereas generalizing entails extending a property to all members of a category, limiting entails restricting a property to only members of a category. For example, if you know that elephants have property X, which would you test to determine whether only mammals have property X: a hippopotamus, a fox, a crocodile, or a snake? Both category and similarity information are relevant to selecting evidence to generalize or limit a hypothesis. Although 70% of participants chose diverse evidence for generalizing a hypothesis, only 25% chose the analogous evidence for limiting one. However, the percentage of participants choosing the appropriate evidence for limiting increased to 70% when they were given a rule for category membership. These results suggest that hypothesis-limiting behavior is affected by how participants establish category boundaries.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia 22904-4400, USA. kincannon@virginia.edu
authors.forename: Alexandra
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kincannon
authors.forename: Barbara A
authors.initials: BA
authors.lastname: Spellman
mesh_terms: D003071:Cognition; D006801:Humans; D011897:Random Allocation