{"pk":50481,"title":"Development and Utilization of a Continuous-Space Description of Paintings","subtitle":null,"abstract":"Theories of category learning suggest that some aspects of item similarity (e.g., exemplar to exemplar; category center to category center) play a key role in predicting learning. Yet, measuring the distance between items can be difficult for real-world categories, so researchers often use contrived items (e.g., aliens with 1 to 5 circles on their chest). Here, we examined the role of similarity using more naturalistic categories: painting styles. To measure perceived distance between paintings, participants (N = 1,335) completed 512 trials of a triplet task, choosing which of two paintings was visually most similar to a target. Triplets were drawn randomly from 475 still life and landscape paintings by 40 artists. A machine learning algorithm then placed the paintings in a continuous space based on 571,286 total decisions. We used this space in a new learning task, where participants identified the artist of previously seen/unseen paintings. Initial results suggest perceived distances predicted learning outcomes.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"Concepts and categories; Learning; Memory"}],"section":"Member Abstracts with Poster Presentation","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/34t5c5wt","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Ezgi","middle_name":"Melisa","last_name":"Yüksel","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Wisconsin-Madison","department":""},{"first_name":"C. Shawn","middle_name":"","last_name":"Green","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Wisconsin-Madison","department":""},{"first_name":"Haley","middle_name":"","last_name":"Vlach","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Wisconsin-Madison","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2025-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/50481/galley/38443/download/"}]}