Knowledge Representation: Concepts & Categorization

● concept: goes beyond just definitions of objects; will include actions, features, memories related
to the object, associations, etc.; can be personal or cultural
○ bit of information attached to an object that help us put everything together
○ mental representation of a class or individual (Smith, 1989)
○ meaning of objects, events, and abstract ideas (Kiefer & Pulvermuler, 2012)
Categorization
- filing concepts correctly (because we can’t think of concepts individually; reduces complexity in our
minds & allows for better identification)
● reduces complexity
● allows identification
● reduces the need for constant learning
○ we don’t always need to remember each thing that we come across as its own
○ we can immediately associate an object with its category and what the category holds
● allows for action
Kinds of Categorization
1. Logical Categories
a. according to some rule (logical rules)
b. typically used for more abstract concepts, principles, more philosophically oriented
c. ex. conjunction, disjunction, conditional, biconditional
2. Natural Categories
a. real world categorization
b. how things naturally seem to be grouped together
c. ex. plants, animals (pets, etc.), foods
d. man-made or artifact objects vs. natural existing objects
3. Goal-Directed Categories
a. ambiguous definitions for how you might want to class an object; created just for the
moment or for a specific purpose
b. defining characteristic meets a particular goal -- what the object is for (functions)
c. ex. things to rescue from the house in a fire (might not necessarily be naturally
categorized together, but in this case, they have a certain goal)
Natural Categories
● continuous variables
○ various colors all grouped into one category (e.g. yellow -- different shades but all under
yellow)
● graded membership
○ ex. which is a better bird, a canary or a penguin?
○ some items fall more naturally into a category than other items
● hierarchical organization
○ levels of categorization: some concepts are more specific than others
Definitional Approach
● continuous variables & family resemblance
○ prototype: average, most typical member of the category + others with family
resemblances (similarities with the prototype)
Prototype Approach
● graded membership & typicality
○ prototype is a mix of the most typical members of the category
○ ex. when you ask people to draw a bird, they draw the prototype (more likely to look like
canaries, sparrows, etc. and not bats, penguins)
○ almost in every category → what you use more & what you hear people talk about more
● prototypicality also depends culturally
○ ex. being surrounded by certain fruits in a certain culture
● if you were to ask someone to draw something from a particular category, what would they draw?
Levels of Categorization of Concepts
- depends on expertise (non-expert: basic; expert: specific)
● specific levels/subordinate levels
○ would have features of superordinate level + basic level + features unique to specific
level
○ ex. granny smith apple
● basic levels
○ where specific levels are clumped together
○ would have features of superordinate level + features unique to the basic level
○ ex. apple
○ typically the easiest to think of all the features → most features are listed when we try to
define a particular category
● superordinate levels (global)
○ overarching categories where you have subcategories
○ ex. fruit
- but we identify faces to a specific level (most humans have an expertise with face identification)

The Theories
● classical view/feature-based
○ isolate features of object/concept
● prototype view
○ try to find characteristic (typical) features of object/concept
● exemplar view
○ try to find good examples of the objects in concept
● knowledge-based
○ use your experience to construct an explanation for the object being described
● schemata view
○ find frameworks in which object being described would fit into & compare with your
schemata

Cognitive Psychology: how we form concepts → formation + categorization, also retrieval

Network Models
Collins and Quillan’s semantic network
● cognitive economy
 ○ facts or properties are stored at the highest appropriate level and assumed to be true for
all lower levels
○ however close you are to the node, it’s easier for you to come at the response to your
question
○ example
■ “Does a dog have live young?” requires us to travel up the network to
“mammal,” where the appropriate fact is stored
■ “Does a dog have a tail?” → faster response because it’s stored in “dog”
● spreading activation
○ primes different ideas in relation to what was already mentioned
○ ex. thinking about robins primes canary, ostrich, animal due to spreading activation
● some problems for hierarchical network models
○ some things we think about much faster than others
■ the typicality effect
● people can verify “a pig is an animal” faster than “a pig is a mammal”
● people can verify “a robin is a bird” faster than “a turkey is a bird” even
when hierarchically, it should take the same amount of time (both one
node away from bird)
Connectionist network
● input, output, hidden units
● some properties that are easily associated to concepts, others that are not
○ speed of getting to them depends on how we typically think about concepts
● Which channel am I going through?
○ Am I trying to understand what a thing can do? what a thing is? etc.