Categorization (8) Flashcards
What is concept formation?
Induction of concepts by dividing items into classes based on shared properties (aka categorization)
Concepts can be _____________, meaning they don’t have necessary, specific or sufficient features, such as a game.
Concepts can be polymorphic
What are the 3 main types of concepts?
basic level concepts
superordinate concepts
abstract level concepts
Basic level concepts are ____________________________________.
Give an example
basic level - based on perceptual similarity
i.e. birds, flowers
Superordinate concepts are groups of __________________________________
Give an example
groups of concepts not based on perceptual similarity
politicians, athletes
Abstract concepts do not refer to ___________ _____________, but to some ___________, ____________ or ________
not refer to individual entity but to a property, relation or state
Bhatt et al 1988 trained pigeons to do what? How well was their response performance?
Pigeons respond to different key when shown exemplar from a category
Also transferred ability to novel stimuli of the same category
80% performance for category exemplars
60% for novel category stimuli
What are the two main theories of basic level concept formation?
exemplar theory
prototype theory
Exemplar theory says that in basic concept formation subjects do what?
Learn about every example/instance independently
we then classify novel experiences by their similarity to example stimuli
Prototype theory says that subjects store an _________ _________ corresponding to the _______ _________/ ____ _________of training examples
store an abstract concept corresponding to central tendency/ key features of training examples
What do exemplar theory and prototype theory differently suggest about novel item classification?
exemplar theory would suggest that novel item classification always harder than familiar item classification
whereas
prototype theory suggests that classification of novel items may be better than familiar items if the novel item is closer to or is the prototype
The Bhatt et al pigeon study showed support for which theory?
A prototype theory
B exemplar theory
C Both theories
D Neither theory
B exemplar theory
Homa et al found evidence supporting ____________ theory in humans, where humans categorize the _________ more accurate than _________ stimuli
Homa et al supported prototype theory - humans categorize the prototype more accurately than training stimuli
Aydin and Pearce (1944) found evidence for __________ theory in animals, where birds responded more to the __________ _________ than any of the ________ _________.
evidence for prototype theory
birds responded more to positive prototype than any of the positve exemplars, despite never seeing the positive prototype
In the Aydin and Pearce 1944 prototype study, positive prototypes were assigned the letters _ _ _, whereas negative prototypes were assigned the letters _ _ _
positive prototypes assigned A B C , where one letter represents a block
negative prototypes were assigned D E F, where one letter represents a block
How were Positive/ negative exemplar training stimuli created in the Aydin and Pearce 1944 prototype study?
By swapping one letter block from the opposite prototype - disorting
Whittlesea (1987), studied catgeorisation in humans.
Prototype theory would predict that all lists should be ______________ __ ____ ______ difficulty , whereas exemplar theory would predict that _____ __ should be easiest to categorise.
Which theory was correct
Prototype theory predicts all lists categorised to same degree of difficulty
Exemplar theory - list 1 categorised easiest. Less similar lists categorised slower this theory was correct
True or false, humans and animals both show evidence for the prototype theory and the exemplar theory?
True
What does feature theory suggest? How does this differ from exemplar theory?
Exemplar theory suggests that we store the whole exemplar
whereas feature theory suggests that we store the component features of each exemplar
The feature theory is an improved ___________ ______, but can also explain _________ ______ findings.
Improved exemplar theory
can also explain prototype theory findings
It is argued that categories may from by a process of _____________ _________, where features of a category are ________ with the category label.
Category formation may arise due to associative learning
features of category associated with category label
Blocking can occur in category association under what conditions?
If pairing a new feature of a category in presence of an existing feature, we learn less about the new feature
In Shanks (1990) experiment he had participants predict what?
Predict a disease based on the symptoms
In Shanks (1990) experiment, which disease was easier to predict from headaches, and why?
Neuroscience Allergy easier to predict as more surprising
Wasserman et al (1992) showed that birds can form ___________ categories, by pairing ________ and ______ in the same response category despite not sharing _________ similarity
birds formed superordinate categories by pairing people and chairs in same response category despite no perceptual similarity
In terms of abstract-level concepts, what technique is uses to study in animals, and how would it work with colours?
Match to sample technique
Birds given sample image, red or green, must peck key corresponding to comparison image of the same colour sample
Using the same-different MTS technique what did birds struggle with?
transferring skill to different colours
Hugart et al 1995 provided some evidence birds could ___________ their abstract concepts
some evidence of generalization/transfer of abstract evidence
Overall there is ________ evidence that animals form abstract concepts
A limited
B no
C extensive
D controversial
A limited
