THE INFLUENCE OF CATEGORY FEATURE''''S SIMILARITY AND RIVALROUSNESS ON CATEGORY
类别特征的相似性与竞争性对归类的影响

The current study examined the effect of the property of stimulus' feature on ca tegory. Participants in the research consisted of 180 senior under-graduates in South China Normal University. The materials included learning materials and te sting materials. And the learning materials were a sample sheet depicting 12 mem bers of two categories, 6 for each category. The testing materials included many new stimuli which are different from the members in the sample sheet in simil arity and rivalrousness. Participants were supposed to predict the category la bel of each stimulus based on the group defined in the sample sheet. The proport ion of category-accordance response and the confidence of the response were ana lyzed. The results of the two experiments showed that: (1) as the two components of similarity, the number of matching features and their matching probability w ere in direct proportion with the accordance and confidence of the response;(2) as the two components of rivalrousness, the number of rivalrous features and the ir rivalrous probability were in inverse proportion with the accordance and conf idence of the response.