Judging the Typicality of an Instance: Should the Category Be Accessed First?

Ss received instances consisting of 6 descriptors referring to a single person. Ss judged the typicality of each instance when a person's category was activated before the instance was processed, called category-first, or when a category was activated after the instance was processed, called instance-first. Ss in the instance-first condition rated the instance as more characteristic of the category than did Ss in the category-first condition. Recognition of descriptors that were central to the category was better than that for peripheral descriptors, especially in the category-first condition. These findings support a model that assumes categories influence the encoding of an instance, instances influence the instantiation of a category, and the latter effect is stronger than the former. The recognition data suggest the representation of an instance is determined when instance is encoded and is little affected by later judgments. A second experiment involving memory-based judgments replicated these effects and showed that memory-based judgments of typicality were not affected by initial judgments but were influenced by processes that occurred during the original encoding and, perhaps also, during retrieval. The findings are discussed in terms of a model using distributed-memory architecture to represent categories and instances.