What are the effects of preexposure of stimuli on participants’ subsequent ability to categorize them accurately? An experiment employing artificial, abstract, visual stimuli confirms that, for adult humans, the effect of preexposure is dependent upon category structure. Whether preexposure has beneficial or detrimental effects is shown to be dependent on the way category examples are generated from the category base patterns. The results are predicted by salience reduction accounts of perceptual learning but may be problematic for stimulus differentiation accounts.
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