Psy 3080 Chapter 9 Key Terms

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Concept

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A mental representation of a class of things.
i.e. when I think about cats, I am drawing on my concept/mental representation of cats which includes info about what cats are, what they look like, how they behave. etc.

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Categorization

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Most commonly studied function of concepts.
-process by which things are placed into groups called "categories"

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Why categories are useful

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-figure 9.1
-categories have been called "pointers to knowledge"
-help us understand individual cases we've never seen before
-help us understand behaviors we may otherwise find baffling.

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Categories as "pointers to knowledge" FIG 9.1

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-when you know something is in a category "i.e. cats," you know a lot of general things about it and can focus your energy on specifying what is special about this particular object.
-categories provide wealth of general info about an item
-allow us to identify special characteristics of a particular item.

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Definitional approach to categorization

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pg. 241
-according to this, we can decide whether something is a member of a category by determining whether a particular object meets the definition of the category.

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Family Resemblance- Things in a category resemble one another in several ways

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-Wittgenstein 1953
-proposed this idea to deal with the problem that definitions often don't include all members of a category. p. 242
-family resemblance approach allows for variation within a category instead of setting definite criteria that every member of a category must must meet.

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Why doesn't the definitional approach to categorization work?

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-because most categories "chair" contain members "consisting of legs" that don't conform to all instances the definition (i.e. a beanbag)

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Prototype Approach to Categorization

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p. 243
-its an avg. representation of what you have seen the most frequently FIG 9.3
-membership in a category is determined by comparing the object to a standard "prototype" that represents the category.

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Characteristics of a Prototype ("typical")

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a "typical" member of the category
-characteristic features that describe what members of that concept are like
-formed by averaging category members a person has encountered in the past
-contains the most salient features that are true of most instances of that category.
-look at FIG 9.3 (typical bird prototype example)

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Differences in protypicality (Elinor Rosch, Goodness of fit, 1973)

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-High prototypicality: means a category member (sparrow) closely resembles the category prototype (average mental representation of a bird)
-Low prototypicality: means that the category member (bat) DOES NOT closesly resemble category prototype (or typical bird). (p. 243)
-Quantified Study for protypicality FIG 9.4 (ratings closer to 1 considered better examples of categories)

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Fig 9.4 Results (Prototypicality-Rosch-p. 243)

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-the 1.18 rating for sparrow means most people agreed that a sparrow is a good example of a "bird."
-the 4.53 rating for penguin & 6.15 for bat show these were not considered good examples of birds.

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Prototypicality

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-a term used to describe how well an object resembles the prototype of a particular category.

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High Prototypical Objects

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a. they have high family resemblance
b. statements about them are verified rapidly
c. they are named first
d. they are affected more by priming

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Fruit, Chair, Student. Are these concepts or categories?

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Concepts
A fruit represents a category of all fruits (apple, plum, cherry, grape etc)

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Definition of Category

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the set of things included in the class. (all fruits, all things belonging to the concept of a chair etc)

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Exemplar

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A member of the category
i.e. the exemplar "apple" is a member of the category of all fruits which is part of our mental representation/concept of "fruit."

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Attribute

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a predicate or property that can be true or false of a thing.
-i.e. sour (as an attribute to lime)
-A concept (fruit) represents a category (all fruits), which consists of exemplars (such as apple) that are composed of attributes (sweet).

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Why doesn't the definitional approach to categorization work well?

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Not all members of everyday categories have the same defining features.
-Necessary/sufficient features are the problem with the definitional approach. e.g. "games" Ludwigs testiment pg. 242

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Prototype Definition

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-an abstract representation of the "typical" member of a category

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Typicality Effect Fig 9.5

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-ability to judge highly prototypical objects (i.e. an apple as a fruit) faster than say, a pomegrante as a fruit (low in prototypicality).