Categorization
Concepts and categories
• We use stored knowledge to deal with daily
demands; think, solve problems, make decisions
• The fundamental unit of symbolic knowledge is
the concept
• an idea about something that provides a means of
understanding the world
• Concepts are the general ideas that enable the
categorization of unique stimuli as related to one
another.
• concept is a mental representation of some object,
event, or pattern that has stored in it much of the
knowledge typically 
• thought relevant to that object, event, or pattern.
• Categorization is the way by which concepts
are organized
• A category is a concept in itself 
• which functions to organize or point out aspects
of equivalence among other concepts based on
common feature or similarity to a prototype
• A category can be defined as a class of similar
things (objects or entities) that share one of
two things: either an essential core or some
similarity in perceptual, biological, or
functional properties
 The Classical View (feature based categories)
• all examples or instances of a concept share fundamental characteristics, or
features 

The features represented are individually necessary and collectively

Nature and
sufficient

Assumptions
theory of • concepts mentally represent lists of features

concepts
• membership in a category is clear-cut
• all members within a category are created equal

The classical view follows on scientific taxonomies and help in

forming artificial concepts
• Allows us to categorize atypical objects
• Bats as mammals
• Tomatoes as fruits
• Coconuts as nuts
 Characteristics of
human categories
Semantic memory doesn’t generally use necessary and sufficient rules or features to create categories

Categories in our semantic memories tend to be loose and fuzzy.

• Members of a category vary in how truly they fit the category
• Graded membership

Other principles of categorization related to graded membership

• Central tendency
• Idea that there is some mental core or center to the category where the best members are found
• typicality effect
• The degree to which items are viewed as typical central members of a category

Novick [2003] showed that airplanes increased tremendously in their rated typicality as vehicles for a period of about a month after the September 11, 2001, terrorist
attacks on the United States, but dwindled back to baseline about four to five months later)

Members of a category even if not sharing certain features share a number of other features (family resemblance)

Related to the family resemblance principle is the idea that real-world features do not occur independently of one another. (correlated attributes)
• the things in the real world that have wings often have beaks too.
 PROBABLISTIC
THEORY OF
CATEGORIZATION
assume that categories in
semantic memory are created
by taking into account various
probabilities and likelihoods
across a person’s experience.

One way of deriving categories central, core instance of a category

probabilistically is by using a
prototype
average of all of your experiences with members of a category

prototype is an idealized representation that probably does not correspond to any individual member
A competing idea about how
people use probabilistic
when people think about categories, they are mentally taking into account each experience, instance or example,
information to create and use of the various encounters that have been experienced with members of that category
categories is exemplar theory

both approaches often make prototype theory predicts that a typical example is judged rapidly because it is highly similar to the prototype
the same or similar predictions
and are sometimes difficult to
distinguish
exemplar theory says it’s because the typical example resembles so many of the stored exemplars
Research findings

Chin-Parker and Ross (2004)

• oriented people to either “diagnostic” features (it has to have this

feature to be a member of the category—which sounds a bit like the
classic view of categorization) or “prototypical” features (members of
the category typically have this feature) in a learning task
• people showed sensitivity only to the kind of feature they had used
during learning
• if they learned via the diagnostic features, they did not show
sensitivity to the prototype and vice versa
Problems of probabilistic theories
high degree of Adhoc categories are
Circularity problem of These Ad hoc
flexibility of semantic influenced by the
probabilistic theory categories
memory categories. context a person is in

how does memory know

which experiences should be
averaged across to form a
category without knowing
what the category is ahead
of time?
People can generate a color gray is more like white
category without prior in the context of hair color,
show graded structure
experience too (adhoc but more like black in the
categories) context of clouds.

have a prototype

exhibit typicality effects

EXPLANATION-BASED THEORIES

highlights the important aspect of our People can use their understanding of
semantic categories are essentially
categories: that they are structures we the causal relations among category
theories of the world we create to
impose on the world, structures that members to make inferences about
explain why things are the way they
may or may not reflect how the world the internal structure and functioning
are.
actually is of other members of a category
• shoe is in the same category as brick,
but in a different category than sock,
• if your category is “Things to pound a
nail with if you don’t have a
hammer”
Research studies
• Borghi, Glenberg, and Kaschak (2004)
• people were asked to indicate whether certain words corresponded

embodied cognition to parts of an object, such as a car

• prior to this people read a sentence that encouraged them to take a
particular perspective
influences the use of • “You are driving a car”
• “You are washing a car”

semantic concepts • people who were told to imagine they were driving a car responded
faster to parts that were in the interior of the car (e.g., speedometer)
than the parts on the outside of the car (e.g., trunk),
• whereas the reverse was true for the other perspective

people treat categories • People treat members of a category as if they have the same

by following the principle underlying, perhaps invisible, property or essence

• No underlying essence that makes an object a member of the category

of psychological
TOOL
• people are making decisions about how to categorize things based on
their beliefs, right or wrong, about the various members of a category

essentialism