creators_name: Harnad, Stevan
editors_name: Harnad, Stevan
type: bookchapter
datestamp: 2001-06-18
lastmod: 2011-03-11 08:54:40
metadata_visibility: show
title: Psychophysical and cognitive aspects of categorical perception: A critical overview
ispublished: pub
subjects: percep-cog-psy
subjects: psy-phys
full_text_status: public
keywords: categorical perception, psychophysics, adaptation level theory, event-related potentials, color perception, phoneme perception, perceptual learning, similarity judgment
abstract: Categorization is a very basic cognitive activity. It is involved in
                               any task that calls for differential responding, from operant discrimination to
                               pattern recognition to naming and describing objects and states-of-affairs.
                               Explanations of categorization range from nativist theories denying that any
                               nontrivial categories are acquired by learning to inductivist theories claiming
                               that most categories are learned. "Categorical perception" (CP) is the name
                               given to a suggestive perceptual phenomenon that may serve as a useful
                               model for categorization in general: For certain perceptual categories,
                               within-category differences look much smaller than between-category
                               differences even when they are of the same size physically. For example, in
                               color perception, differences between reds and differences between yellows
                               look much smaller than equal-sized differences that cross the red/yellow
                               boundary; the same is true of the phoneme categories /ba/ and /da/. Indeed,
                               the effect of the category boundary is not merely quantitative, but qualitative.
date: 1987
date_type: published
publication: Categorical Perception: The Groundwork of Cognition
publisher: Cambridge University Press
pagerange: 1-52
refereed: FALSE
referencetext: Bialystok, E. & Olson, D. R. (1987) Spatial Categories: The Perception and
Conceptualization of Spatial Relations. In S. Harnad (Ed.) Categorical perception:
The groundwork of cognition. New York: Cambridge University Press 

Bornstein, M. H. (1987) Perceptual Categories in Vision and Audition. In S.
Harnad (Ed.) Categorical perception: The groundwork of cognition. New York:
Cambridge Univerity Press 

Diehl, R. L. & Kluender, K. R. (1987) On the Categorization of Speech Sounds. In
S. Harnad (Ed.) Categorical perception: The groundwork of Cognition. New York:
Cambridge Univerity Press 

Ehret, G. (1987) Categorical Perception of Speech Signals: Facts and Hypotheses
from Animal Studies. In S. Harnad (Ed.) Categorical perception: The groundwork
of Cognition. New York: Cambridge University Press 

Eimas, P. D., Miller, J. L. & Jusczyk, P. W. (1987) On Infant Speech Perception
and the Acquisition of Language. In S. Harnad (Ed.) Categorical perception: The
groundwork of Cognition. New York: Cambridge Univerity Press 

Keil, F. C. & Kelley, M. H. (1987) Developmental Changes in Category Structure.
In S. Harnad (Ed.) Categorical perception: The groundwork of Cognition. New
York: Cambridge Univerity Press 

Kuhl, P. K. (1987) The Special-Mechanisms Debate in Speech Perception:
Nonhuman Species and Nonspeech Signals. In S. Harnad (Ed.) Categorical
perception: The groundwork of Cognition. New York: Cambridge Univerity Press 

Macmillan, N. A. (1987) Beyond the Categorical/Continuous Distinction: A
Psychophysical Approach to Processing Modes. In S. Harnad (Ed.) Categorical
perception: The groundwork of Cognition. New York: Cambridge Univerity Press 

Massaro, D. W. (1987) Categorical Partitioning: A Fuzzy-Logical Model of
Categorization Behavior. In S. Harnad (Ed.) Categorical perception: The
groundwork of Cognition. New York: Cambridge Univerity Press 

Medin, D. L. & Barsalou, L.W. (1987) Categorization Processes in Category
Structure. In S. Harnad (Ed.) Categorical perception: The groundwork of
Cognition. New York: Cambridge Univerity Press 

Molfese, D. L. (1987) Electrophysiological Indices of Categorical Perception. In S.
Harnad (Ed.) Categorical perception: The groundwork of Cognition. New York:
Cambridge Univerity Press 

Pastore, R. E. (1987) Categorical Percption: Some Psychophysical Models. In S.
Harnad (Ed.) Categorical perception: The groundwork of Cognition. New York:
Cambridge University Press 

Regan, D. M. (1987) Evoked Potentials and Colour-Defined Categories. In S.
Harnad (Ed.) Categorical perception: The groundwork of Cognition. New York:
Cambridge Univerity Press 

Remez, R. E. (1987) Neural Models of Speech Perception: A Case History. In S.
Harnad (Ed.) Categorical perception: The groundwork of Cognition. New York:
Cambridge Univerity Press 

Repp, B. H. & Liberman, A. H. (1987) Phonetic Boundaries are Flexible. In S.
Harnad (Ed.) Categorical perception: The groundwork of Cognition. New York:
Cambridge Univerity Press 

Rosen, S. & Howell, P. (1987) Auditory, Articulatory and Learning Explanations of
Categorical Perception in Speech. In S. Harnad (Ed.) Categorical perception: The
groundwork of Cognition. New York: Cambridge Univerity Press 

Snowdon, C. T. (1987) A Naturalistic View of Categorical Perception. In S.
Harnad (Ed.) Categorical perception: The groundwork of Cognition. New York:
Cambridge Univerity Press 

Wilson, M. (1987) Brain Mechanisms in Categorical Perception. In S. Harnad
(Ed.) Categorical perception: The groundwork of Cognition. New York: Cambridge
Univerity Press 

citation:   Harnad, Stevan  (1987) Psychophysical and cognitive aspects of categorical perception: A critical overview.  [Book Chapter]     
document_url: http://cogprints.org/1571/1/harnad87.cpreview.html