Typicality Effect of Category Knowledge on Similarity Estimation

Abstract

We examined the effect of category knowledge on visual recognition by similarity estimation task. We use stimuli that differ in typicality, near by prototype and far from prototype. Despite both types of stimili were judged a category member, more effects were observed for near patterns. This result suggests that category knowledge act as emphasizing the category common features. The Category Utility(Corter and Gluck, 1992), which was originally proposed as basic level indicator, can use to calculate the amount of effects and similate experimental results. These results suggest that category functionality, which defines category structure, influences stimulus recognition itself.