CATEGORIZATION IN JUDGMENTS OF RELATIVE MAGNITUDE

The role of categorization in judgments of relative magnitude was exam ined in five experiments. We focused on the bowed serial position effe ct: the propensity for items of extreme magnitude to be discriminated more readily than items of intermediate magnitude. In Experiment 1. su bjects categorized animals as large or small. The latencies showed an effect for serial position similar to the usual effect found for compa rative judgments. In Experiment 2, subjects performed a standard compa rative judgment for two linear orderings of animals, one in which magn itude categorization time was consistent across the order and the othe r in which magnitude categorization varied as a function of item magni tude. Results showed the usual bowed serial position effect for the he terogeneous ordering, but no such effect for the homogeneous ordering. Experiments 3 and 4 replicated the results of the first two experimen ts with different stimuli. In Experiment 5, subjects were precued with the size category of the to-be-compared items before malting a compar ative judgment. Results demonstrated a direct effect of a category cue on judgments of relative size. These findings are discussed in suppor t of models in which categorization plays a significant role in the de rivation of relational knowledge. (C) 1998 Academic Press.