Models of category learning have been extensively studied in cognitive science and primarily tested on perceptual abstractions or artificial stimuli. In this paper, we focus on categories acquired from natural language stimuli, that is, words (e.g., "chair" is a member of the furniture category). We present a Bayesian model that, unlike…

Rational models of cognition typically consider the abstract computational problems posed by the environment, assuming that people are capable of optimally solving those problems. This differs from more traditional formal models of cognition, which focus on the psychological processes responsible for behavior. A basic challenge for rational models…