3- Concepts and Categories Flashcards
(32 cards)
What are concepts?
Internal psychological representations
What do concepts allow us to do?
Understand the world and process more efficiently
Concepts are…
‘Building blocks of semantic knowledge’
Concepts are a method to…
Categorise items, ideas, and abstractions by similarities
How are concepts categorised?
One concept relates to many other concepts and can be considered with these
2 examples of abstract concepts
Behaviour, personality
What is a category?
A class of concepts that share common properties
How is conceptual knowledge organised?
By categorisation
Categorising groups…
Similar things together
Categorising allows…
Us to make sense of information
Categories are often based on…
A representation of knowledge and not reality
What knowledge do we use to categorise?
Intuitive knowledge
When are there fuzzy boundaries in categorisation?
Category members aren’t always clear
2 ways that category members can be subjective
Influenced by different ages and experiences
Categorisation systems adapt and change throughout life
What needs to be considered when categorising?
Context
Who defined categorisation as a continuum?
McCloskey & Glucksberg, 1978
What is the difficulty with fuzzy boundaries when categorising?
Some items are clearly members or not, some are intermediate
Typical category members
Members that share lots of concepts
Atypical category members
Members that share less concepts
Who do we generally expect that people are referring to when talking about a category?
Typical members
Which members are easier to process and access?
Typical members
Which members are prioritised when structuring knowledge?
Typical members
Which members are rated as part of a category more often?
Typical members more than atypical (Hampton, 1979)
When are reaction times faster when categorising?
When categorising typical members rather than atypical (Rips et al., 1973)
