Psychology 3130A/B Chapter 2: Chapter 2 – The Psychology of Similarity

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 3130A/B
• Professor: John Paul Minda

Document Summary

A dominal general construct operates according to the same principles whether or not the objects or ideas are being compared are visual, auditory, lexical, directly perceived, or recalled from memory: ex. Similarity between two pictures of dogs or two dogs you recall in memory. Similarity as a computation is carried out in the same way regardless of context: however, similarity judgments are still affected by context. Must account for flexible and fluid nature of how people understand and rate similarity: ex. Surface similarity vs. deeper, conceptual similarity i. e. canadian penny vs. american penny & canadian penny vs. canadian nickel similarity is flexible there is more than one kind of similarity. Ta(cid:396)get (cid:449)o(cid:396)d is (cid:862)fork(cid:863) su(cid:271)je(cid:272)t should (cid:272)o(cid:396)(cid:396)e(cid:272)tl(cid:455) ide(cid:374)tif(cid:455) (cid:862)knife(cid:863) (cid:395)ui(cid:272)ke(cid:396) tha(cid:374) (cid:862)truck(cid:863) Same category, similar roles, used in similar contexts, made of similar material. Similarity plays a role in memory encoding and retrieval. Memory influences higher order thinking: problem solving.