Comparison-Based Learning: Effects of Comparing Instances During Category Learning

When learning about a category, people often compare new instances with similar old instances and notice features common to the compared instances. Five experiments demonstrate that such comparisons cause features common to compared instances to be considered more important for the category than equally frequent features that are not common to compared instances. Experiment 1 shows that what is learned depends on which instances are compared. Experiment 2 investigates the conditions under which comparison-based learning occurs. The next experiments find that these comparisons affect subjective feature frequency (Experiment 3) and sensitivity to feature correlations (Experiment 4). Experiment 5 shows that comparisons during early learning affect what is learned from later instances. The discussion focuses on the implications for models of category representation.