Rules and similarity are at the heart of our understanding of human categorization. However, it is difficult to distinguish their role as both determinants of categorization are confounded in many real situations. Rules are based on a number of identical properties between objects but these correspondences also make objects appearing more similar. Here, we introduced a stimulus set where rules and similarity were unconfounded and we let participants generalize category examples towards new instances. We also introduced a method based on the frequency distribution of the formed partitions in the stimulus sets, which allowed us to verify the role of rules and similarity in categorization. Our evaluation favoured the rule-based account. The most preferred rules were the simplest ones and they consisted of recurrent visual properties (regularities) in the stimulus set. Additionally, we created different variants of the same stimulus set and tested the moderating influence of small changes in appearance of the stimulus material. A conceptual manipulation (Experiment 1) had no influence but all visual manipulations (Experiment 2 and 3) had strong influences in participants' reliance on particular rules, indicating that prior beliefs of category defining rules are rather flexible.
The ability of the eye to distinguish between intermittently presented flash stimuli is a measure of the temporal resolution of vision. The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between the features of the human rod bipolar cell response (as measured from the scotopic ERG b-wave) and the psychophysically measured critical fusion frequency (CFF). Stimuli consisted of dim (-0.04 Td x s), blue flashes presented either singly, or as flash pairs (at a range of time separations, between 5 and 300 ms). Single flashes of double intensity (-0.08 Td x s) were also presented as a reference. Visual responses to flash pairs were measured via (1) recording of the ERG b-wave, and (2) threshold determinations of the CFF using a two-alternative forced-choice method (flicker vs. fused illumination). The results of this experiment suggest that b-wave responses to flash pairs separated by < 100 ms are electrophysiologically similar to those obtained with single flashes of double intensity. Psychophysically, the percepts of flash pairs < 100 ms apart appeared fused. In conclusion, the visual system's ability to discriminate between scotopic stimuli may be determined by the response characteristics of the rod bipolar cell, or perhaps by the rod photoreceptor itself.