ABSTRACT
Psychology.—Categorization is the fundamental adaptive behavior by which we “break down” physical and social reality (→SOCIAL COGNITION). Its cognitive function is to create the various categories (of objects, individuals, etc.) needed to transform the continuous into the discrete. The traditional, “Aristotelian” view of categorization assumes the logical equivalence of elements in the same category (→LOGIC), in the sense that they all share the set of necessary and sufficient features that defines the category. This conception left its mark on early work in cognitive psychology, like that of Jerome Bruner, which focused on the formation of well-defined categories. In the first experimental categorization paradigm, objects are constructed by combining a number of dimensions (for example, shape, color, and size) and the subject has to discover the categorization rule arbitrarily chosen by the experimenter. A series of objects is presented, and for each one, the experimenter states whether it belongs to the category, in such a way that after a certain number of objects, it is logically possible to discover the rule with certainty. This paradigm thus examines the subject’s ability to analyze and logically process examples and counterexamples by means of hypothesis testing.
