SELECTIVE ATTENTION AND THE FORMATION OF LINEAR DECISION BOUNDARIES -COMMENT ON MCKINLEY AND NOSOFSKY (1996)

S. C. McKinley and R. M. Nosofsky (1996) compared a linear decision-bo und model with the generalized context model (GCM) in their ability to account for categorization data from experiments that used integral-o r separable-dimension stimuli and required selective attention or atte ntion to both dimensions. McKinley and Nosofsky (1996) found support f or the GCM and concluded that decision-bound theory needs to incorpora te assumptions about selective attention. In this commentary it is arg ued that (a) unlike the GCM, decision-bound theory provides a framewor k for independently investigating perceptual and decisional forms of s elective attention; (b) the effect of stimulus integrality on the form of the optimal decision bound is misinterpreted; (c) averaged data is biased against decision-bound theory and toward the GCM; (d) many a p riori predictions of the GCM are violated empirically; and (e) exempla r theory has lost much of its initial theoretical structure.