Ch 9 - Concepts Flashcards
Ross and Murphy
Sorting task: eggs sometimes classified as a breakfast food, sometimes as a dairy product
Bruner et al.
Categorising is to make different things equivalent, responding to them as members of that group, not to their uniqueness.
Barsalou
Categorisation reflects a person’s goals
Eco
Platypus- categorisation is complex
Macintyre
The diagnosis of ME is based on one major criterion plus 4 out of 8 minor criteria
Bruner et al
People do categorise using necessary and sufficient conditions.
Rosch
Asked ppts to state ‘goodness of exemplar’ of several instances.
Fruit= fruity
Olive=\ fruity
Therefore categories have internal structure
Barsalou: Rosch
Typicality does not correlate with frequency. Penguins would be atypical if we lived in the South Pole.
Rips et al.
also
Rosch
Sentence verification:
‘A robin is a bird’ verified faster than ‘A penguin is a bird.’
Rosch and Mervis
Property/attribute listing method:
Less typical instances have fewer properties in common with other category members.
Problems with classical view? (TrILBy)
1) typicality
2) intransitivity of categories
3) lack of definitions
4) borderline cases
Borderline cases- evidence?
McCloskey n Glucksberg- bookends
Intransitivity- evidence?
Hampton- car seats
Lack of definitions- evidence?
Wittgenstein- games (not proof, just evidence)
Putman, Kripke- robot cats thought experiment
Rosch’s belief aggregation of characteristics
Certain attributes cluster together in nature, eg. Feathers, wings, beak, ability to fly.
Problems with prototype theory
Mic
meaning (what does typicality mean?/instability/context-sensitivity
complex concepts
‘Meaning of typicality’ - evidence?
Armstrong et al. - definitional concepts, eg. odd number/even number show typicality effects
Armstrong
Proposed dual-process model: classical view = core
Prototype theory = identification procedures
Roth n shoben
Typicality effects changed by linguistic context, eg. riding/milking cow/horse
Medin n Shoben
Spoon eg.:
The contribution of large/small to typicality depends on whether spoon is made of wood/metal - instability of typicality depending on context
Why instability is a problem
- it is at odds with Rosch’s argument that prototypes are clusters of correlated properties reflecting the natural world
- if diagnostic power of attributes can change, what does that mean about typicality?
- the contribution made by different properties to typicality (eg spoon size vs material)
Fodor
Complex concepts create problems for most theories of concepts
Hampton, using mcCloskey n Glucksberg’s data
Typicality is a good predictor, explaining 46-96% of variance of categorisation probability
Hampton, using McCloskey n Glucksberg’s data - factors other than typicality
familiarity/lack thereof
‘Technicality’ of membership
‘Similarity is a quack’
Goodman- not similarity, just ‘sharing properties with’ - so not ‘similarity’ that’s driving categorisation at all
Lawn mowers and plums- who?, n what did they conclude?
Murphy n Medin
Similarity is shorthand for something else that makes categories coherent
Murphy n Medin’s idea n example they used
Concepts are explanation based, eg intoxicated explains jumping into pool
Pizza/quarter study:
Who? What does it show?
Rips
More similar to a quarter/more likely to be a pizza
Shows dissociation between similarity/what it is. This means ‘being’ and ‘similarity’ are not the same.
Kroska n goldstone
Ppts categorised some scenarios as ‘fear’, but more similar to joy.
