PSYCH101 Chapter Notes - Chapter 8: Aphasia, Pragmatics, Problem Solving

• School: University of Waterloo
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYCH101
• Professor: Paul Wehr

Document Summary

Concept- the mental representation of an object, event or idea. Classical categorization- the earliest study of categorization: this theory claims that objects or events are categorized according to a certain set of rules or by a specific set of features. Graded membership- the observation that some concepts appear to make better category members than others. Prototype- mental representations of an average category member (the likely image that comes to mind when imagining something)- used in categorization by comparison. People follow either approach- the choice depends on how complicated a category specific example may be. If there are few major distinctions between items, we use resemblance; if there are complications we switch to rules. Ex: bat darts by, our first impression is likely a bird because it resembles one. But if investigated further you will see that a bat fits the classical description of a mammal and not a bird.