Psychology 2135A/B Chapter Notes - Chapter 9: Prototype Theory, Family Resemblance, Psych

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 2135A/B
• Professor: Sarah Babcock

Document Summary

Ordinary concepts are in an important way, the building blocks out of which all your knowledge is created. The idea is that you need concepts in order to have knowledge, and you need knowledge in order to function. Wittgenstein: proposed that members of a category have a family resemblance to one another defining features. One way to think a(cid:271)out this patter(cid:374) is to i(cid:373)agi(cid:374)e the (cid:858)ideal(cid:859) for ea(cid:272)h fa(cid:373)il(cid:455) someone who has all the defining features. One way to think about definitions is that they set the boundaries for a category. Objects closer to the prototype are better members of the category than objects farther from the prototype. In a sentence verification task, research participants are presented with a succession of sentences; their job is to indicate whether each sentence is true or false. Seems that certain category members are privileged just as the prototype theory proposes.