Ch9 Lecture#6 Flashcards
Lecture 6 title
Concepts and categorization
Why concepts ? 🤔
- Rich (lions , forms)
2. Interrelated (world peace)
Cognitive economy
minimizes processing effort and resources
WHAT CAN WE DO WITH CONCEPTS?
Cognitive economy = minimizes processing effort and resources
Increase cognitive processing efficiency for:
memory
reasoning
communication
creating complex / new concepts (from pre-existing ones)
Generalization
WHAT DO WE NEED TO FORM CONCEPTS?
Memory of specific, past instances
Measure of similarity between past instances and new instances
- we don’t need to recognize the same object, but, rather, other (or related) instances of that object
Concepts
mental representations
they are typically stable
relate to other concepts
typically a single word
A way of understanding the world
Categories
Categories are a way of grouping things together on the basis of something
not always stable and can change
Concept ex
tallness
Category ex
tall people that we know is a category
Kinds of categories
Natural kinds vs Artifacts
Stable vs Ad hoc
Types of natural kind categories
Natural kinds
Natural kinds: groupings that occur naturally (birds, trees)
Types of artifacts categories
Artifacts: designed or invented by people (kitchen appliances)
