PSYCH211 Midterm: Exam 3
9 Mar 2017
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Perceptual categories: the grouping together of objects that have similar appearances. Example is categorizing colours into red, blue green etc More abstract categories e. g. , mammal: looking at a complex animal such as a platypus is not clear if it is a mammal or amphibian or a bird. Why do we have concepts and categories like dog, mammal and glue: to avoid overload. Example: if we did"t have a concept of dog and a concept for cat we would have an overload of categories with no way to group a lot of information. Having concepts allows us to have a dog pile and a cat pile: to identify objects. Example: looking at a dog and tting this into existing mental categories and being able to identify dogs which help us to identify objects: to use concepts to think about particular objects. One view of thoughts is that they are composed of concepts and combining concepts together produces thought.
