CATEGORIZATION RESPONSE-TIME WITH MULTIDIMENSIONAL STIMULI

Categorization response time (RT) was examined in three separate exper iments, in each of which exemplars varied on two physical dimensions. Three different types of stimuli were used: (1) horizontal and vertica l line segments of varying length that were joined at an upper left co rner, (2) rectangles of varying width and height, and (3) circles or s emicircles of varying size with a radial arm of varying orientation. N o evidence was found that stimulus familiarity or the category prototy pes played any special role in determining categorization RT. Instead, RT decreased with distance from the stimulus to the categorization de cision bound.