Concepts and Categorization (CH. 9)

Question 1

What is a Concept?

Answer 1

• Mental representation of things
• The building blocks from which all knowledge is created
• Allow us to categorize, and apply knowledge

Question 2

The Classical View of Concepts

Answer 2

Concepts are merely lists of necessary and sufficient conditions: Every object with properties A, B, C, and D belongs to category Y, and every object that belongs to category Y has properties A, B, C, and D

Question 3

Problems with the Classical View

Answer 3

Ludwig Wittgenstein highlighted how hard it is to give formal definitions to human concepts (e.g., what are the necessary and sufficient conditions for defining the concept of “game”?)

Question 4

McClosekey & Glucksberg (1978)

Answer 4

Studied how people inconsistently form boundaries between categories. The main takeaway from this study is that the boundaries between categories are not well defined or “fuzzy”

Question 5

Elanor Rosch

Answer 5

Members of a category differ in terms of how well they represent the category as a whole

Question 6

What is Family Resemblance?

Answer 6

The idea that members of a category (e.g., all dogs, all games) resemble one another. In general, family resemblance relies on some number of features being shared by any subset of category members, even though these features may not be shared by all members of the category. Therefore, the basis for family resemblance may shift from one subset of the category to another

Question 7

What is a Prototype?

Answer 7

A single “best example,” or average, identifying the “center” of a category

Question 8

What is Typicality?

Answer 8

The degree to which a particular case (an object, situation, or event) is typical for its kind

Question 9

Rips (1975) Typicality and Generalization

Answer 9

People are more likely to generalize attributes from typical category members to atypical, than the reverse

Question 10

What is a Typical Group?

Answer 10

Typical mammals paired with aversive shock during conditioning phase

Question 11

Atypical Group

Answer 11

Atypical mammals paired with aversive shock during conditioning phase

Question 12

Dunsmoor & Murphy (2014) Typicality and Conditioned-Fear Generalization

Answer 12

If we learn fear-conditioning for any object in a category, then we will express fear or anxiety if we are shown pictures or images of objects that are more typical in the category of the fear-conditioned object

Question 13

What is Prototype Theory?

Answer 13

• Concepts are specified by a central member that possess all of the characteristic features of the concept
• Central member is NOT an exemplar. Likely doesn’t exist in real world

Question 14

Posner & Keele (1968) Testing Prototype Theory

Answer 14

Prototype should be easy to categorize, even if never seen. The findings were that participants were able to correctly categorize old exemplars the quickest, prototype exemplars the second fastest, and new exemplars the slowest

Question 15

Testing Prototype Theory: What are the Phases?

Answer 15

Training Phase: repeatedly shown numerous distortions of each prototype and instructed to categorize

Test Phase: shown old exemplars, new exemplars, and each prototype and asked to categorize

Question 16

What is Sentence Verification Task?

Answer 16

An experimental procedure used for studying memory in which participants are given simple sentences (e.g., “Cats are animals”) and must respond as quickly as possible whether the sentence is true or false

Question 17

What is Production Task?

Answer 17

An experimental procedure used in studying concepts, in which the participant is asked to name as many examples (e.g., as many fruits) as possible

Question 18

What is Rating Task?

Answer 18

A task in which research participants must evaluate some item or category with reference to some dimension, usually expressing their response in terms of some number. For example, they might be asked to evaluate birds for how typical they are within the category “birds,” using a “1” response to indicate “very typical” and a “7” response to indicate “very atypical”

Question 19

What is Anomia?

Answer 19

A disorder, often arising from specific forms of brain damage, in which the person loses the ability to name certain objects

Question 20

What is the Hub and Spoke Model?

Answer 20

A proposal for how concepts might be represented in the brain, with tissue in the anterior temporal lobes serving as the “hub” – a brain location that connects and integrates information from many other brain areas. The “spokes” represent more specific elements of the concept – with (for example) visual information relevant to the concept stored in visual areas; relevant action information stored in motor areas; and so on

Question 21

What is Exemplar Theory?

Answer 21

• We do not form a prototype; individual exemplars are stored in memory
• Categorization is based on the similarity between a new item and stored exemplars
• Nosofsky (1992) = Generalized Context Model
• Hintzman (1986) = Multiple Trace Memory Model

Question 22

What are the Differences Between Exemplar and Prototype Theory?

Answer 22

• When faced with a new object, the prototype theory posits that we perform one computation where we measure or decide on how similar the new object is to the prototype
• When faced with a new object, the exemplar theory posits that we perform numerous computations where we measure or compare how similar the new object is to all instances of dogs in our memory pool

Question 23

How are Concepts Organized?

Answer 23

Hierarchically; not just as a network

Question 24

What is Transitivity?

Answer 24

All dogs are mammals, and all mammals are animals, so all dogs are animals

Question 25

What is Property Inheritance?

Answer 25

Lower level categories inherit higher level properties, but not vice versa