How can humans acquire relational representations that enable analogical inference and other forms of high-level reasoning? Using comparative relations as a model domain, we explore the possibility that bottom-up learning mechanisms applied to objects coded as feature vectors can yield representations of relations sufficient to solve analogy…

A model-based framework, due originally to R. A. Fisher, and a design-based framework, due originally to J. Neyman, offer alternative mechanisms for inference from samples to populations. We show how these frameworks can utilize different types of samples (nonrandom or random vs. only random) and allow different kinds of inference (descriptive vs.…

A. Redish et al. (2007) proposed a reinforcement learning model of context-dependent learning and extinction in conditioning experiments, using the idea of "state classification" to categorize new observations into states. In the current article, the authors propose an interpretation of this idea in terms of normative statistical inference. They…