Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Most models of similarity assume differential weights for the represented properties. However, comparatively little work has addressed the issue of how the cognitive system assigns these weights. Of particular interest to the modelling of similarity are factors which arise from the comparison process itself. One such factor is defined by Goldstone, Medin & Centner's (1991) 'MAX Hypothesis'. We present a series of experiments which clarify the main components of 'MAX' and examine its scope.