Week 13: Cognitive Development Flashcards
What is the purpose of mental concepts of categories?
To permit appropriate responses to new objects encountered.
What is a basic-level category?
The most salient category at an intermediate level of specificity (e.g., chairs rather than furniture).
What are the two main theories of how people learn concepts?
- Summary description of a whole category
- Learning exemplars of the category
What is the relationship between concepts and knowledge?
People can more easily learn concepts that are consistent with their knowledge.
What are concepts in psychology?
Mental representations of categories.
What is an example of a category that may not have a clear definition?
Planets, as evidenced by the debate over Pluto’s classification.
True or False: Categories are traditionally assumed to be well-defined.
True.
What are fuzzy categories?
Categories with unclear boundaries that can shift over time.
What did Hampton (1979) find about category membership?
Items are not clear members or nonmembers, but form a continuum.
What is typicality in the context of categories?
The degree to which an item is considered a good example of a category.
How does typicality influence cognition?
- Judged category members more often
- Faster categorization
- Learned before atypical items
- Easier language comprehension
- Typical items produced first in language.
What does the family resemblance theory propose?
Items are typical if they have features frequent in the category and not frequent in other categories.
What is an example of a category hierarchy?
brown bear > bear > mammal > vertebrate > animal > entity.
Fill in the blank: The most typical category member is often called the _______.
[category prototype]
What did Rosch and Mervis (1975) demonstrate about typical items?
Subjects learned items with common features before those with less common features.
What influence does frequency have on typicality?
Frequency has some effect, but it’s not the most important variable.
What is the significance of borderline items in categories?
They illustrate that category membership can be ambiguous and subjective.
What did McCloskey and Glucksberg (1978) find about people’s judgments of category membership?
People often change their judgments about borderline items.
How do children typically label categories according to Brown (1958)?
They tend to use the names that adults prefer to use.
What is the core function of concepts in intelligent behavior?
To allow individuals to know what to do in new situations.
Fill in the blank: Concepts allow you to extend what you have learned about a limited number of objects to a _______ set of entities.
[potentially infinite]
What is an example of a borderline category item?
An olive being considered a fruit.
What is the preference for the basic level of categorization?
It refers to the tendency to label categories at a level that is neither too specific nor too general.
This concept was first studied in detail by Eleanor Rosch and her students.
Who first studied the basic level of categorization?
Eleanor Rosch and her students.
Reference: Rosch, Mervis, Gray, Johnson, & Boyes-Braem, 1976.