Predicting Judgment Time From Measures of Psychological Proximity

Pathfinder networks are evaluated in terms of their ability to predict Ss' response time in category and size judgment tasks. For both tasks, pairwise proximities derived from the network representation of relatedness estimates predicted response times independently of the original relatedness estimates. These results indicate that Pathfinder proximities represent psychological proximity as measured by judgment time better than Ss' own estimates of relatedness. Pathfinder's predictive ability is derived from a focus on relatedness estimates from the more sensitive related end of the rating scale. Evidence supporting this account is presented, and an explanation for sensitivity differences among ratings is proposed.