Knowing versus Naming: Similarity and the Linguistic Categorization of Artifacts Barbara C. Malt Lehigh University Steven A. Sloman and Silvia Gennari Brown University and Meiyi Shi and Yuan Wang Lehigh University We argue that it is important to distinguish between categorization as object recognition and as naming because the relation between the two may not be as straightforward as has often been assumed. We present data from speakers of English, Chinese, and Spanish that support this contention. Speakers of the three languages show substantially different patterns of naming for a set of 60 common containers, but they see the similarities among the objects in much the same way. The observed patterns of naming therefore cannot arise only from the similarities that speakers of the three languages see among the objects. We also offer suggestions about how complexity in naming may arise, and the data provide some evidence consistent with these suggestions. Exploring how artifacts are named vs “known” may provide new insights into artifact categorization. © 1999 Academic Press What does it mean to categorize? In the real world, at least two different acts are appropri- ately called categorization. First, people recog- nize objects as having properties in common with entities stored in memory, 1 and this recog- nition results in an encoding in an internal rep- resentation system. Second, people connect ob- jects with words, both in producing a name for an object and in understanding an object name used by someone else. These two acts are surely closely connected: Objects that have important features in common tend to be given the same name. Indeed, many prominent models of cate- gorization (e.g., Estes, 1986, Gluck & Bower, 1988; Kruschke, 1992; Medin & Schaffer, 1978; Nosofsky, Palmeri, & McKinley, 1994) as well as several informal theories (e.g., Gelman & Wellman, 1991; Keil, 1989; Rosch Barbara Malt and Yuan Wang, Department of Psychol- ogy, Lehigh University. Steven Sloman and Silvia Gen- nari, Department of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences, Brown University. Meiyi Shi, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Lehigh University. This work was supported by NIMH Grant MH51271 to Barbara Malt and Steven Sloman. We thank Douglas Medin for suggesting use of the Cultural Consensus Model, Larry Hubert and Martin Richter for statistical advice, and Robert Goldstone, Kenneth Livingston, and Gregory Murphy for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. We also thank the following for permission to reproduce images of their products: Consumer Value Stores, Disney Enterprises, Inc., International Home Foods, Inc., Johnson & Johnson, Lehigh Valley Farms, Mott’s Consumer Services, Neutrogena Corporation, Playtex Products Inc., The Procter & Gamble Company, Rite Aid Corporation, Rubber Maid Incorporated, Spring Tree Corporation, and Unilever United States, Inc. Ad- dress correspondence and reprint requests to either Bar- bara Malt, Department of Psychology, 17 Memorial Drive East, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA 18015 (e-mail: bcmø@lehigh.edu) or Steven Sloman, Depart- ment of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences, Box 1978, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912 (e-mail: Steven_Sloman@brown.edu). 1 Whether those properties are physical or not, readily perceived or more hidden. 230 0749-596X/99 $30.00 Copyright © 1999 by Academic Press All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. Journal of Memory and Language 40, 230 –262 (1999) Article ID jmla.1998.2593, available online at http://www.idealibrary.com on