Fruits and vegetables categorized: an application of the generalized context model.

In the study reported in this paper, we investigated the categorization of well-known and novel food items in the categories fruits and vegetables. Predictions based on Nosofsky's (1984,1986) generalized context model (GCM), on a multiplicative-similarity prototype model, and on an instantiation model as applied in Storms, De Boeck, and Ruts (2001) were compared. Despite suggestions in the literature that prototype models predict categorization from large categories better than exemplar models do, our results showed that the exemplar-based GCM yielded clearly better predictions than did a (multiplicative-similarity) prototype model.