title: Salience Not Status: How Category Labels Influence Feature Inference.
abstract: Two main uses of categories are classification and feature inference, and category labels have been widely shown to play a dominant role in feature inference. However, the nature of this influence remains unclear, and we evaluate two contrasting hypotheses formalized as mathematical models: the label special-mechanism hypothesis and the label super-salience hypothesis. The special-mechanism hypothesis is that category labels, unlike other features, trigger inference decision making in reference to the category prototypes. This results in a tendency for prototype-compatible inferences because the labels trigger a special mechanism rather than because of any influences they have on similarity evaluation. The super-salience hypothesis assumes that the large label influence is due to their high salience and corresponding impact on similarity without any need for a special mechanism. Application of the two models to a feature inference task based on a family resemblance category structure yields strong support for the label super-salience hypothesis and in particular does not support the need for a special mechanism based on prototypes.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, Cardiff University.
authors.forename: Mark K
authors.initials: MK
authors.lastname: Johansen
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, Cardiff University.
authors.forename: Justin
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Savage
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Swansea University.
authors.forename: Nathalie
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Fouquet
authors.affiliation: Psychology and Language Sciences, University College London.
authors.forename: David R
authors.initials: DR
authors.lastname: Shanks
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention; D002965:Classification; D003210:Concept Formation; D003657:Decision Making; D006801:Humans
keywords: Classification; Concepts; Decision making; Feature inference