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# The role of similarity in the development of categorization

## Details

**Authors** Sloutsky

**Year** 2003

**Publisher** Trends in Cognitive Sciences

**Discipline** Human Development

[Read it at the publisher](https://doi.org/10.1016/S1364-6613(03)00109-8) 
10.1016/S1364-6613(03)00109-8

## In authors' words

### What they set out to do (purpose)

To argue that perceptual and attentional mechanisms are the places where categorization is developed.

### What they found (results)

The more often one makes categories, or is put into situations where categorization is needed, the better and faster one gets at categorization. He concluded that categories are more easily facilitated by similarity-based relationships between objects, rather than a difference-based one. This is due to the natural impulse to use the parts of an object in order to determine what it is and in which category it belongs to.

## Commentary

### In short

The use of parts to figure out where the whole object belongs requires not only Systems, but Distinctions and Relationships.

### In more detail

Sloutsky, 2003 argued that perceptual and attentional mechanisms are the places where categorization is developed. This is due to the perceptual and attentional mechanisms ability to detect similarities in an environment. Sloutsky inferred that the more often one makes categories, or is put into situations where categorization is needed, the better and faster one gets at categorization. He concluded that categories are more easily facilitated by similarity-based relationships between objects, rather than a difference-based one. This is due to the natural impulse to use the parts of an object in order to determine what it is and in which category it belongs to. Sloutsky wrote, “For example, when 2- to 3-year-olds were asked to extend a learned word to novel instances, they attended to both shape and texture if the entities presented had eyes (presence of eyes is diagnostic for the animate–inanimate distinction), whereas when the same entities were presented without eyes, participants attended only to shape.” The use of parts to figure out where the whole object belongs requires not only Systems, but Distinctions and Relationships.

**Patterns it shows** D, S, R, P

**How to cite this** Sloutsky (2003). The role of similarity in the development of categorization. Trends in Cognitive Sciences.