PSYC 336 Lecture 9: 9.5 - Concepts and Generic Knowledge V

• School: University of San Diego
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 336
• Professor: Appleton-Knapp

Document Summary

Prototypes economical representation of what"s typical for a category. Exemplars provide info that"s lost from the prototype. Information about the variability within the category. People routinely tune their concepts to match the circumstances. Ex. thinking about gifts differently when considering gifts for a student than a faculty member. People rely on exemplars different settings/perspectives trigger different memories different exemplars come to mind. Mix of exemplar and prototype knowledge may vary from person to person and from concept to concept. The pattern of knowledge might depend on the size of the category and how easily confused the category memories are with one another. With exemplars being used when the individuals are more distinct. People can draw on either prototypes or exemplars when thinking about concepts. For most concepts, definitions are not available. For many purposes, you don"t need a definition and can rely instead on a mix of prototypes and exemplars.