Physical and Psychological Spaces

Abstract

An ordinal SSA approach where we are interested in the form of the transformation function of data into distances or the shape of the regression curve in the Shepard diagram is discussed in the context of determining the shape of the generalization gradient in learning. This leads to the question of whether distances different from the Euclidean may be more appropriate. A family of distance functions known as Minkowski distances is investigated mathematically and psychologically.