Chapter 5 – Concepts and categories

In this chapter, we consider how we define categories and the associated mental representation of a category, or concept. Furniture is an example of a category of items such as chairs, tables, sideboards and footstools. Each of the members of the category furniture has something in common with the other words, specifically, they are all objects that are useful or desirable to make living in a space possible. We explore why categories are useful to be able to communicate with other speakers of the same language and to help us process incoming information. However, despite their utility, not all categories are well-defined or agreed on. We look at how categories are learned, neuropsychological evidence supporting the existence of categories and models that try to explain how we store and access categories. At the end of the chapter, we then throw everything we have learned up in the air and consider the possibility that categories might not even exist, an idea explored by an emerging area of research called ad hoc cognition.

Chapter 5 – Introduction

Transcript

  • Chapter 5 – Flashcards

    category

    Collections of items that we group together as being equivalent in some way.

    concept

    The mental representation of a category which includes information about the properties of the category such as ‘wings’, ‘beak, ‘feathers’.

    analogous reasoning

    Thinking that relies on comparing two or more things and highlighting their similarities (ie an analogy) to assist with information processing.

    cognitive economy

    The tendency for the processes involved in cognition to minimise the resources and effort used. For example, rather than storing the concept ‘wings’ for every type of bird a person knows (e.g., robin, sparrow, emu), ‘wings’ might instead be stored once with the concept ‘bird’.

    family resemblance

    This is where members of a category share clusters of features which are not shared by members of other categories. This leads to high similarity of items within a category and low similarity of items from different categories.

    spreading activation

    When a concept is activated such as cat, activation spreads through a semantic network of related concepts ‘fur, whiskers, paws, cat food’ so that these related concepts are readily available for use

    inductive reasoning

    Reasoning based on observations about the world.

    domain

    Higher level of category – the domain of living things, includes the categories of mammals, birds and plants.

    psychological essentialism

    The idea that certain categories (e.g., women, spiders etc.) have an underlying reality, true nature, or essence, that cannot be directly observed, but which informs our reasoning about members of that category.

    amodal

    Literally ‘without modality’ – in other words, a model or representation that is not based in modality such as vision or hearing.

    sensorimotor system

    The areas of the brain where our senses (touch, taste, smell etc) and movements are controlled.

Chapter 5 – Quiz

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