{"pk":29927,"title":"The spatial arrangement method of measuring similarity can capture high-dimensional, semantic structures","subtitle":null,"abstract":"Despite its centrality to cognition, similarity is expensive tomeasure, spurring development of techniques like the SpatialArrangement Method (SpAM), wherein participants placeitems on a 2-dimensional plane such that proximity reflectssimilarity. While SpAM hastens similarity measurement, itssuitability for higher-dimensional stimuli is unknown. InStudy 1, we collected SpAM data for eight differentcategories composed of 20-30 words each. Participant-aggregated SpAM distances correlated strongly (r=.71) withpairwise similarity judgments, although below SpAM andpairwise judgment split-half reliabilities (r’s>.9), and cross-validation with multidimensional scaling fits at increasingdimensionalities suggested that aggregated SpAM datafavored higher dimensional solutions for 7 of the 8 categories.In study 2, we showed that SpAM can recover the Big Fivefactor space of personality traits, and that cross-validationfavors a four- or five-dimension solution on this dataset. Weconclude that SpAM is an accurate and reliable method ofmeasuring similarity for high-dimensional items.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"similarity; multidimensional scaling; spatialcognition; concepts; traits; Big Five"}],"section":"Poster Session 3","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5h6337nk","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Russell","middle_name":"","last_name":"Richie","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Pennsylvania","department":""},{"first_name":"Bryan","middle_name":"","last_name":"White","name_suffix":"","institution":"New Mexico State University","department":""},{"first_name":"Sudeep","middle_name":"","last_name":"Bhatia","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Pennsylvania","department":""},{"first_name":"Michael","middle_name":"C.","last_name":"Hout","name_suffix":"","institution":"New Mexico State University","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2020-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/29927/galley/19781/download/"}]}