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11 - Computational Models of Categorization

from Part III - Computational Modeling of Basic Cognitive Functionalities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 April 2023

By
Kenneth J. Kurtz
Edited by
Ron Sun
Ron Sun
Affiliation:
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, New York
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Summary

This chapter provides an overview of approaches to formal modeling in the domain of categorization. The core psychological processes addressed by models are: generating a classification decision in response to a stimulus and constructing category representations based on supervised experience. A taxonomy is provided that organizes the formal models in terms of their use of a fixed, combined, or constructed approach to predicting categories under either a cue-based or item-based framework. The chapter gives in-depth coverage of a leading approach (exemplar models) as well as an emerging alternative: a constructed cue-based model (DIVA) that differs from competing accounts by learning to reconstruct the input features via sets of category-specific weights and using the degree of reconstructive success (i.e., goodness-of-fit to the category) to determine the likelihood of membership.

Keywords

categorizationhuman classification learningcomputational modelingsimilarityrulesabstractionconnectionist models
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Computational Cognitive Sciences , pp. 373 - 399
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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