title: Categorical Perception
creator: Harnad, Stevan
subject: Cognitive Psychology
description: Differences can be perceived as gradual and quantitative, as with different shades of gray, or they can be perceived as more abrupt and qualitative, as with different colors. The first is called continuous perception and the second categorical perception. Categorical perception (CP) can be inborn or can be induced by learning. Formerly thought to be peculiar to speech and color perception, CP turns out to be far more general, and may be related to how the neural networks in our brains detect the features that allow us to sort the things in the world into their proper categories, "warping" perceived similarities and differences so as to compress some things into the same category and separate others into different categories
publisher: MacMillan: Nature Publishing Group
date: 2003
type: Book Chapter
type: NonPeerReviewed
format: text/html
identifier: http://cogprints.org/3017/1/catperc.html
identifier:   Harnad, Stevan  (2003) Categorical Perception.  [Book Chapter]    (In Press)  
relation: http://cogprints.org/3017/