Category width and differentiation in semantic categories

Abstract

The hypothesis that the judgemental categorizing behaviour measured by Pettigrew's Category‐Width scale is linked to semantic categorization is investigated. Individual differences in broad vs. narrow categorizing behaviour measured by the C‐W scale are reconceptualized within the framework of Rosch's (1977) theory of human categorization. Two extreme groups on the C‐W scale, broad categorizers and narrow categorizers, were selected as subjects. One experiment employed a short‐term release‐from‐proactive‐inhibition paradigm. The amount of discrepancy in recall between the preshift and the shift trials was used as an index to perceived semantic distance. The result showed that narrow categorizers perceived the same fuzzy items in a semantic category as less similar to the good exemplars of that category than broad categorizers did. In a further experiment using a semantic‐categorization technique, narrow categorizers judged the same fuzzy items as category members less frequently than broad categorizers did, indicating that narrow categorizers possess more differentiated semantic categories than do broad categorizers. These findings are seen as an extension of the differential categorizing behaviour on artificial categories in the C‐W scale to semantic categorization for which there is a pre‐existing system.