RELATION BETWEEN THE RATIONAL MODEL AND THE CONTEXT MODEL OF CATEGORIZATION (original) (raw)

A formal proof is pnnided that Anderson's {1990) rational model of categorization generalizes the Medin and Schaffer {1978) context model. According to the context model, people represent categ<>ries by storing individual exemplars in memoiy. According to the rational mode!, people represent categories in terms of midtiple exemplarclusters or prototypes. In both models, a multiplicative rule is used to compute the similarity of an item to the underlying category representations. In certain special cases, each multiple prototype in the rational model corresponds to an individual exemplar, and in these cases the rational model reduces to the context model. Preliminary quantitative comparisons between the models are illustrated to test whether the multiple-prototype view adds significant explanatory power over the pure exemplar view.