Categorical Perception: The Groundwork of Cognition

by Stevan R. Harnad

Overview

How do we sort the objects, people, events, and ideas in the world into their proper categories so that we may experience and interact with them? This fundamental question about human—and animal—perception and cognition is the subject of Categorical Perception, a comprehensive survey of a wide range of important research findings on the subject. The volume brings together all known examples of categorical perception, from research on humans and animals, infants and adults, in all the sense modalities: hearing, seeing, and touch. The perceptual findings are then interpreted in terms of the available cognitive and neuroscientific theories of how categorical perception is accomplished by the brain. Research on elementary perceptual and psychophysical categories is then compared with work on higher order categories such as objects, patterns, and abstract concepts. The book proceeds to an integrative view of categorization in general by exploring the most thoroughly investigated case of categorical perception—speech perception.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521267588
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	07/31/1987
Pages:	612
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.53(h) x 1.30(d)

Table of Contents

List of contributors; Preface; Introduction: psychophysical and cognitive aspects of categorical perception: a critical overview S. Harnad; Part I. Psychophysical Foundations of Categorical Perception: 1. Categoric perception: some psychophysical models R. E. Pastore; 2. Beyond the categorical/continuous distinction: a psychophysical approach to processing modes N. A. MacMillan; Part II. Categorical Perception of Speech: 3. Phonetic category boundaries are flexible B. H. Repp and A. M. Liberman; 4. Auditory, articulatory, and learning explanations of categorical perception in speech S. Rosen and P. Howell; 5. On infant speech perception and the acquisition of language P. D. Eimas, J. L. Miller and P. W. Jusczyk; Part III. Models for Speech Categorical Perception: 6. Neural models of speech perception: a case history R. E. Remez; 7. On the categorization of speech sounds R. L. Diehl and K. R. Kluender; 8. Categorical partition: a fuzzy-logical model of categorization behaviour D. W. Massaro; Part IV. Categorical Perception in Other Modalities and Other Species: 9. Perceptual categories in vision and audition M. H. Bornstein; 10. Categorical perception of sound signals: facts and hypotheses from animal studies G. Ehret; 11. A naturalistic view of categorical perception C. T. Snowden; 12. The special-mechanisms debate in speech research: categorization tests on animals and infants P. K. Kuhl; 13. Brain mechanisms in categorical perception M. Wilson; Part V. Psychophysiological Indices of Categorical Perception: 14. Electrophysiological indices of categorical perception for speech D. L. Molfese; 15. Evoked potentials and color-defined categories D. Regan; Part VI. Higher-order Categories: 16. Categorization processes and categorical perception D. L. Medin and L. W. Barsalou; 17. Developmental changes in category structure F. C. Keil and M. H. Kelly; 18. Spatial categories: the perception and conceptualization of spatial relations E. Bialystok and D. R. Olson; Part VII. Cognitive Foundations: 19. Category induction and representation S. Harnad; Author index; Subject index.

Editorial Reviews

"...thought provoking and broadly relevant across a spectrum of issues of concern to cognitive scientists." Contemporary Psychology

"...provides a thorough survey of recent developments in the study of categorization and draws out some of the important consequences of this work to other studies of cognition." Philosophical Psychology

From the Publisher