The Psychology of Human Thought : An Introduction

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ion The process of filtering out irrelevant details while preserving the most relevant, common, or significant parts. 56 basic level of categorization Intermediate level that provides the most cognitively useful compromise between being informative (members share many common traits) but also generic (glosses over minor differences). 63 category Collection of objects, people, events, or ideas in the world that are considered similar or treated similarly despite differences. 55 classical view Assumes a concept to be the necessary and sufficient conditions for membership in a category. 57 concept The mental representation of a category which can take on different forms depending on which theory is being considered. 55 exemplar approach Assumes a concept to be a collection of remembered instances that make up a category, with no abstraction. 58 graded structure When certain members of a category are thought to be better examples than others. 57 prototype approach Assumes a concept to be an abstracted list or full example consisting of common/average features that members are likely (but not required) to have. 58 selective attention A focus of resources on characteristics that are relevant for classification. 58 similarity The extent to which two or more concepts or examples are alike, either through having shared properties or close proximity in multidimensional psychological space. 56 supervised category learning Learning about a category when examples are labeled with what category they are in either initially or after a guess. 61 theory-driven approach Assumes a concept to be based on feature similarity but in service of and collaboration with knowledge-rich theories about the world. 60 70 • Psychology of Human Thought • Chapter 4