title: Categorizing entities by common role.
abstract: Many categories group together entities that play a common role across situations. For example, guest and host refer to complementary roles in visiting situations and, thus, are role-governed categories (A. B. Markman & Stilwell, Journal of Experiment & Theoretical Artificial Intelligence, 13, 329-358, 2001). However, categorizing an entity by role is one of many possible classification strategies. This article examines factors that promote role-governed categorization over thematic-relation-based categorization (Lin & Murphy, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 130, 3-28, 2001). In Experiments 1a and 1b, we demonstrate that the use of novel category labels facilitates role-governed categorization. In Experiments 2a and 2b, we demonstrate that analogical comparison facilitates role-governed categorization. In Experiments 1b and 2b, we show that these facilitatory factors induce a general sensitivity to role information, as opposed to only promoting role-governed categorization on an item-by-item basis.
authors.affiliation: Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA. micahbg@gmail.com
authors.forename: Micah B
authors.initials: MB
authors.lastname: Goldwater
authors.forename: Arthur B
authors.initials: AB
authors.lastname: Markman
mesh_terms: D002965:Classification; D003210:Concept Formation; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D007802:Language; D012380:Role