• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.233-257
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• 2014

Category-based induction is one of major inferential reasoning methods used by humans. This research tested the effect of perceived within-category variability on the inductive generalization. Experiment 1 manipulated variability by directly presenting category exemplars. After displaying low variable (low variability condition) or highly variable exemplars (high variability condition) depending on condition, participants performed inductive generalization task about a category in question. The results showed that participants have greater confidence in generalization when category variability was low than when it was high. Rather than directly presenting category exemplars in Experiment 2, participants performed induction task after they formed category variability impression by categorization task of identifying category exemplars. Experiment 2 also found the tendency that participants have greater inductive confidence when category variability was low. The variability effect discovered in this research is distinct from the diversity effect in previous research and the category-based induction model proposed by Osherson et al. (1990) cannot fully account for the variability effect in this research. Test of variability effect in category-based induction is discussed in the general discussion section.