chapter 4 Flashcards
What is a concept?
A mental representation that denotes a category.
What is a category?
A grouping of objects, events, or things in the world based on shared features.
How do concepts and categories differ?
A category exists in the world, while a concept is a mental representation of that category.
Why are categories important?
They allow for quick judgments, predictions, and problem-solving but may lead to misclassification.
What is stimulus generalization?
The tendency to extend a learned response to a whole class of stimuli based on similarity.
What is Roger Shepard’s (1987) ‘universal law of stimuli generalization’?
The idea that generalization is guided by similarity, meaning behavior toward new stimuli depends on their resemblance to past stimuli.
How does categorization increase efficiency?
It reduces the amount of information one needs to remember by grouping similar experiences into a single representation.
What is a behavioral equivalence class?
A group of things that may be different, but we behave toward them in the same way.
What is cognitive efficiency?
The brain’s ability to store general information instead of unique details to speed up memory retrieval.
Why do humans form natural categories?
The world already contains naturally occurring groups, so we learn about them.
How do concepts help us react to situations?
Concepts influence behavior by allowing us to quickly determine how to act toward something based on past experiences.
How do concepts help in predictions and inferences?
They allow for inductive inference, meaning we predict something’s properties based on its category (e.g., assuming a dog can bark).
How do concepts aid communication?
We use category labels to summarize experiences and share them with others.
How do concepts help with problem-solving?
They allow us to categorize problems and apply solutions from past experiences.
What is the classical view of concepts?
The idea that concepts are defined by necessary and sufficient conditions.
What is the hierarchical approach to categorization?
A theory that concepts are arranged in hierarchies, with lower-level members sharing the properties of higher-level ones.
What is the probabilistic view of concepts?
The idea that category membership is not absolute but based on likelihood (includes prototype and exemplar theories).
What is the theory view of concepts?
The idea that people form categories based on their understanding of how the world works, rather than on perceptual similarity.
What is the typicality effect?
The phenomenon where people rate some category members as more typical than others (e.g., a robin is a more typical bird than a penguin).
What is family resemblance?
The idea that members of a category share similarities but do not all have one defining characteristic.
Why is similarity not always a good way to determine category membership?
Some concepts, like ‘furniture,’ have members that look very different (e.g., chair vs. lamp).
What are the three levels of categorization?
Superordinate level: General categories (e.g., ‘animal’).
Basic level: Everyday categories (e.g., ‘dog’).
Subordinate level: Specific categories (e.g., ‘Labrador Retriever’).
Which level of categorization do people use most?
The basic level (e.g., ‘apple’ instead of ‘fruit’ or ‘Granny Smith’).
How do experts categorize differently from novices?
Experts use subordinate-level categories more often (e.g., an orchard owner saying ‘Granny Smith’ instead of just ‘apple’).
