PSYB57H3 Chapter Notes - Chapter 8: List Of Screw Drives, Iced Coffee, Steven Pinker
Document Summary
This chapter examines the nature of concepts and how we acquire and use them. They are used by individuals to categorize events or objects, and each concept has attributes by which they are classified. There are many ways that attributes can be used to form concepts, including a conjunctive, disjunctive, and relational. A criterial attribute, for instance, is a prerequisite to being part of a particular concept. Both selection and reception tasks can be used to study concepts. In selection tasks, where participants select the instances, individuals generally use conservative focusing in order to determine what the particular concept is. However, this is not the only strategy that can be applied. Participants can also make use of focus gambling, simultaneous scanning, and successive scanning. However, in reception tasks, where the experimenter is in control of the order of presentation, participants use two different strategies: wholist or partist.
