3: Concepts and Catergories

Question 1

What is a concept?

Answer 1

A cluster of ideas that explain something

An attitude or description

A mental representation of something

Question 2

What is a catergory?

Answer 2

A way of grouping things together

Concepts with common features

A label that identifies similar features

Stereotypes

Perceptual catergories that help us interact with the world

Question 3

What is a natural category?

Answer 3

A group of entities that excist in the natural world such as a species of bird

Question 4

What is an artefact category?

Answer 4

A group of man-made objects designed with a specific goal or function in mind

Question 5

What is a nominal category?

Answer 5

A group of objects put together based on arbitary characteristics

Question 6

What are some methods for studying concepts and categories?

Answer 6

Cross-cultural studies of language and classification systems

Learning in artifical environments

Eye movement studies

Brain imagine

Question 7

What is the classical theory of concepts?

Answer 7

A category needs certain defining features that other objects are matched to in order to join the category

Simple, Disjunctive & Conjunctive concepts

Question 8

Who came up with the idea of simple, conjunctive and disjunctive concepts in the classical theory of concepts?

Answer 8

Brunder 1956

Question 9

What did Brunder add to the classical theory of concepts?

Answer 9

simple, conjunctive and disjunctive concepts

Question 10

What are simple concepts as described by Brunder in the classical theory of concepts?

Answer 10

Such as objects having to be a triangle to belong to category X

Question 11

What are conjunctive concepts as described by Brunder in the classical theory of concepts?

Answer 11

Several attributes must be met together to belong to a category such as black squares

Question 12

What are disjunctive concepts as described by Brunder in the classical theory of concepts?

Answer 12

At least one attribute must be met to belong to a category such as being black OR a square

Question 13

What are the criticisms of the classical theory of concepts?

Answer 13

Human behaviour doesn’t follow an in or our rule

Categories are flexiable

People sometimes disagree over categories or change their mind

Question 14

What is the prototype theory of categories and concepts?

Answer 14

For each category, we have a single example which is the most typical member

Different features are more or less important to the category

When making a decision about membership, we compare an item to the prototype

Question 15

What evidence do we have to support the prototype theory?

Answer 15

Typicality gradients: Some are closer to the prototype than others. If it’s untypical, there is more disagreement over where it belongs

Responses vary depending on how well they fit the prototype

Question 16

What are the limitations of prototype theory?

Answer 16

Some members don’t fit the prototype at all

It normaly depends on surface features and not deeper attributes

Question 17

What is exemplar-based theory?

Answer 17

When a stimulus is presented, we check which instance it is most similar to and then put it in that catergory

Question 18

What evidence is there for an exemplar based theory?

Answer 18

Recognises that we have variability in information in a category

Explains how atypical cases are sorted

Level of similarity corresponds to shorter reaction times

Question 19

What is the evidence against an exemplar based theory?

Answer 19

People can learn a good idea of a category from 3 items so many exemplars aren’t needed

Not all exemplars represent catergories well

No idea of how concepts relate together