Similarity and categorization are fundamental processes in human cognition that help complex organisms make sense of the cacophony of information in their environment. These processes are critical for tasks such as recognizing objects, making decisions, and forming memories. In this review, we provide an overview of the current state of knowledge on similarity and psychological spaces, discussing the theories, methods, and empirical findings that have been generated over the years. Although the concept of similarity has important limitations, it plays a key role in cognitive modeling. The review surfaces three key themes. First, similarity and mental representations are merely two sides of the same coin, existing as a similarity-representation duality that defines a psychological space. Second, both the brain's mental representations and the study of mental representations are made possible by exploiting second-order isomorphism. Third, similarity analysis has near-universal applicability across all levels of cognition, providing a common research language.

中文翻译：

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建模相似性和心理空间


相似性和分类是人类认知的基本过程，可帮助复杂生物体理解其环境中信息的嘈杂声。这些过程对于识别对象、做出决策和形成记忆等任务至关重要。在这篇综述中，我们概述了相似性和心理空间的知识现状，讨论了多年来产生的理论、方法和实证发现。尽管相似性概念具有重要的局限性，但它在认知建模中起着关键作用。该评论提出了三个关键主题。首先，相似性和心理表征只是同一枚硬币的两面，作为定义心理空间的相似性-表征二元性而存在。其次，大脑的心理表征和心理表征的研究都是通过利用二阶同构来实现的。第三，相似性分析几乎普遍适用于所有认知层次，提供了一种通用的研究语言。