title: Effects of categorical labels on similarity judgments: a critical analysis of similarity-based approaches.
abstract: Our goal in the present study was to evaluate the claim that category labels affect children's judgments of visual similarity. We presented preschool children with discriminable and identical sets of animal pictures and asked them to make perceptual judgments in the presence or absence of labels. Our findings indicate that children who are asked to make perceptual judgments about identical items judge discriminable items less accurately when making subsequent similarity judgments. Thus, labels do not generally affect children's perceptual similarity judgments; rather, children's reliance on labels to make similarity judgments appears to be attributable to flaws in the methodological approaches used in prior studies. These results have implications for the role of perceptual and conceptual information in children's categorization and induction.
authors: Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1043, USA. nicholaus.noles@gmail.edu
authors: Nicholaus S
authors: NS
authors: Noles
authors: Susan A
authors: SA
authors: Gelman
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D001245:Association Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D002657:Child Development; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003210:Concept Formation / Q000502:physiology*; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D005793:Generalization, Psychological; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology; D010775:Photic Stimulation