Frequency Norms for Actions in Swedish and American Samples (original) (raw)

Abstract

Action categories constitute a domain of categoriza-tion that has received relatively little attention in studies of categorization. Not only do we have the ability to see certain things as cups, cars, trees or dogs, for example, but we can also recognize patterns of movement as running, walking, kicking or jumping. In addition to having categories for objects, a significant aspect of daily activity is perceiving and categorizing the actions of other individuals. Further-more, given the cognitive primacy of basic-level categories and the significant role perception plays in the formation of such categories (e. g., Rosch, Mervis, Gray, Johnson and Boyes-Braem, 1976a), it may very well be the case that basic-level perceptual criteria can be applied to, at least, a somewhat limited domain of action categories.

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