Similarity and dissimilarity as evidence in perceptual categorization

In exemplar models the similarities between a new stimulus and each category exemplar constitute positive evidence for category membership. In contrast, other models assume that, if the new stimulus is sufficiently dissimilar to a category member, then that dissimilarity constitutes evidence against category membership. We propose a new similarity-dissimilarity exemplar model that provides a framework for integrating these two types of accounts. The evidence for a category is assumed to be the summed similarity to members of that category plus the summed dissimilarity to members of competing categories. The similarity-dissimilarity exemplar model is shown to mimic the standard exemplar model very closely in the unidimensional domain.