PSY 3120 Chapter Notes - Chapter 9: Family Resemblance, Hierarchical Organization, Spreading Activation

• School: Vanderbilt University
• Department: Psychology (A&S)
• Course: PSY 3120
• Professor: Seiffert Adriane

Document Summary

Conceptual knowledge: knowledge that enables us to recognize objects and events and to make inferences about their properties. Concepts: the mental representation of a class or individual; the meaning of objects, events and abstract ideas. Category: used to organize concepts; includes all possible examples of a particular concept. Deciding whether something belongs in a specific category based on whether the object meets the definition of the category. Problem: not all members of everyday categories have the same features, so they may not fit the exact definition. Family resemblance: things in a particular category resemble one another in a number of ways, allows for variation within a category. Membership in a category is determined by comparing the object to a prototype that represents the category: prototype: typical member of a category; based on an average of members of a category that are commonly experienced.