PSYCH101 Chapter 8: PSYCH 101 Chapter 8: An Introduction to Psychological Science > Module 8.1 (ONLINE Week 7): The Organization of Knowledge (Krause, Corts, Smith, Dolderman)

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

Document Summary

Understand theories of how people organize their knowledge about the world. Understand how experience and culture can shape the way we organize our knowledge. Concepts and categories concept: mental representation of an object, event, or idea categories: refer to clusters of interrelated concepts (form these groups using a process called categorization) We use a variety of cognitive processes in determining which objects t which category, major problem is graded membership graded membership: observation that some concepts appear to make better category members than others. Prototypes: categorization by comparison prototypes: mental representations of an average category member, allow for classi cation by resemblance. Different from classical categorization because there are no rules or de nitions involved, just a set of similarities in overall shape and function. Main advantage is that they help explain why some category members make better examples than others (eg. blue jay is a closer to the prototypical bird than an ostrich)