PSYC 3440 Chapter Notes - Chapter 8: Peripheral Vision, Biological Motion, Egocentrism

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 3440
• Professor: Caron Bell

Document Summary

Concepts involve group together different entities on the basis of some similarity. They allow us to organize our experience into coherent patterns and draw inferences in situations in which we lack direct experience. We apply previous knowledge to new situations. The tendency to form concepts is a basic characteristic of human beings. The development of conceptual representations in general is based on the assumption that the nature of people"s minds leads them to represent most or all concepts in a particular way. The nature of this representation is of primary interest; the details of the particular concepts are secondary. Certain concepts, time, space, number, living things, are so basic to our understanding of the world that their development is importantn in its own right. Understanding of basic concepts changes dramatically during development but their core seems to be part of our inheritance as human beings.