Exemplar effects in the context of a categorization rule: Featural and holistic influences

Brooks and colleagues (S. W. Allen & L. R. Brooks, 199 1; G. Regehr & L. R. Brooks, 1993) have shown that the classification of transfer stimuli is influenced by their similarity to training stimuli, even when a perfect classification rule is available. It is argued that the original effect obtained by Brooks and colleagues might have resulted from two potential confounding variables. Once these confounds were controlled, the current authors did not replicate Brooks and colleagues’ results in Experiment 1. Exemplar effects appeared in Experiment 2 when transfer stimuli were perceptually more similar to training stimuli than in Experiment 1. In Experiment 3, the authors obtained exemplar effects with separated stimuli, a finding that was not predicted by Brooks and colleagues’ model. The authors suggest that a close perceptual match between training and transfer stimuli is necessary for the effect to occur, for both integrated and separated stimuli. The nature of this perceptual match, holistic or featural, is discussed.