The conceptual base view of categorization (original) (raw)

The Process of Conceptualization as a Basis for Categorization

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research), 2023

The article gives explanation how the process of conceptualization could be the principal aspect of categorization of a concept. Language, proceeding from its resources, verbalizes this experience only in part. Many differences in the semantic volumes of concepts are determined by one or another socio-cultural context, and socio-cultural stereotypes become "cognitive guidelines" of the category.

The evaluation of sources of knowledge underlying different conceptual categories

Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2013

According to the "embodied cognition" theory and the "sensory-motor model of semantic knowledge": (a) concepts are represented in the brain in the same format in which they are constructed by the sensory-motor system and (b) various conceptual categories differ according to the weight of different kinds of information in their representation. In this study, we tried to check the second assumption by asking normal elderly subjects to subjectively evaluate the role of various perceptual, motor and language-mediated sources of knowledge in the construction of different semantic categories. Our first aim was to rate the influence of different sources of knowledge in the representation of animals, plant life and artifact categories, rather than in living and non-living beings, as many previous studies on this subject have done. We also tried to check the influence of age and stimulus modality on these evaluations of the "sources of knowledge" underlying different conceptual categories. The influence of age was checked by comparing results obtained in our group of elderly subjects with those obtained in a previous study, conducted with a similar methodology on a sample of young students. And the influence of stimulus modality was assessed by presenting the stimuli in the verbal modality to 50 subjects and in the pictorial modality to 50 other subjects. The distinction between "animals" and "plant life" in the "living" categories was confirmed by analyzing their prevalent sources of knowledge and by a cluster analysis, which allowed us to distinguish "plant life" items from animals. Furthermore, results of the study showed: (a) that our subjects considered the visual modality as the main source of knowledge for all categories taken into account; and (b) that in biological categories the next most important source of information was represented by other perceptual modalities, whereas in artifacts it was represented by the actions performed with them. Finally, age and stimulus modality did not significantly influence judgment of relevance of the sources of knowledge involved in the construction of different conceptual categories.

Representation at different levels in a conceptual hierarchy

Acta Psychologica, 2011

The present study examines the influence of hierarchical level on category representation. Three computational models of representationan exemplar model, a prototype model and an ideal representation modelwere evaluated in their ability to account for the typicality gradient of categories at two hierarchical levels in the conceptual domain of clothes. The domain contains 20 subordinate categories (e.g., trousers, stockings and underwear) and an encompassing superordinate category (CLOTHES). The models were evaluated both in terms of their ability to fit the empirical data and their generalizability through marginal likelihood. The hierarchical level was found to clearly influence the type of representation: For concepts at the subordinate level, exemplar representations were supported. At the superordinate level, however, an ideal representation was overwhelmingly preferred over exemplar and prototype representations. This finding contributes to the increasingly dominant view that the human conceptual apparatus adopts both exemplar representations and more abstract representations, contradicting unitary approaches to categorization.

Categories and concepts: Theoretical views and inductive data analysis

1993

For humans facing a host of experiences in a complex world, an important activity is to break up these experiences into meaningful, more manageable components. This is the basic problem of categorization. Categorization begins at the early stages of any sensory perception when incoming stimuli are linked to more abstract categories, as appears from the fact that equal-sized physical differences between stimuli are perceived as larger or smaller depending on whether they are in the same category or in different ones (Harnad, ...

A Causal-Model Theory of Conceptual Representation and Categorization

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 2003

This article presents a theory of categorization that accounts for the effects of causal knowledge that relates the features of categories. According to causal-model theory, people explicitly represent the probabilistic causal mechanisms that link category features and classify objects by evaluating whether they were likely to have been generated by those mechanisms. In 3 experiments, participants were taught causal knowledge that related the features of a novel category. Causal-model theory provided a good quantitative account of the effect of this knowledge on the importance of both individual features and interfeature correlations to classification. By enabling precise model fits and interpretable parameter estimates, causal-model theory helps place the theory-based approach to conceptual representation on equal footing with the well-known similarity-based approaches.

Concepts do more than categorize

Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 1999

Concepts underlie all higher-level cognitive processes. Until recently, the study of concepts has largely been the study of categorization. But categorization is only one conceptual function among several. We argue that concepts cannot be understood sufficiently through the study of categorization, or any other function, in isolation, for two important reasons. First, concepts serve multiple functions which interact to affect conceptual structure and processing. Second, studying a single function in isolation encourages one to see cognitive processes that are particular to each function, but discourages the discovery of processes that are common to multiple functions. For these two reasons, we suggest that concepts should instead be studied in the context of a system of interrelated functions.

Psychological categories are semantic individualities

Psychological categories seem to play a fundamental role in the process of knowledge structuring as world objects fall into categories that are inductively rich. The intuition that mental representations obey to some kind of structuring criteria arises mainly from the empirical evidence provided by language, namely from the way language erasing the superficial diversity of multiple experiences is able to give body to sets of representational properties defining distinct semantic identities.

Concepts and Categorization / 1 Concepts and Categories: Memory, Meaning, and Metaphysics

Not only do people categorize in order to understand new entities, they also use the new entities to modify and update their concepts. In other words, categorization supports learning. Encountering a member of a category with a novel property-for example, a flashlight that has a siren for emergenciescan result in that novel property being incorporated into the conceptual representation. In other cases, relations between categories may support inference and learning. For example, finding out that flashlights can contain sirens may lead you to entertain the idea that cell phones and fire extinguishers might also contain sirens. Hierarchical conceptual relations support both inductive and deductive reasoning. If all trees contain xylem and hawthorns are trees, then one can deduce that hawthorns contain xylem. In addition, finding out that white oaks contain phloem provides some support for the inductive inference that other kinds of oaks contain phloem. People also use categories to instantiate goals in planning (Barsalou, 1983). For example, a person planning to do some night fishing might create an ad hoc concept, THINGS TO BRING ON A NIGHT FISHING TRIP, which would include a fishing rod, tackle box, mosquito repellent, and a flashlight. Concepts are also centrally involved in communication. Many of our concepts correspond to lexical entries, such as the English word "flashlight." In order for people to avoid misunderstanding each other, they must have comparable concepts in mind. If A's concept of cell phone corresponds with B's concept of flashlight, it won't go well if A asks B to make a call. An important part of the function of concepts in communication is their ability to combine in order to create an unlimited number of new concepts. Nearly every sentence you encounter is new-one you've never heard or read before-and concepts (along with the sentence's grammar) must support your ability to understand it. Concepts are also responsible for more ad hoc uses of language. For example, from the base concepts of TROUT and FLASHLIGHT, you might create a new concept, TROUT FLASHLIGHT, which in the context of our current discussion would presumably be a flashlight used when trying to catch trout (and not a flashlight with a picture of a trout on it, though this may be the correct interpretation in some other context). A Concepts and Categorization / 4 major research challenge is to understand the principles of conceptual combination and how they relate to

From the Pragmatics of Classification Systems to the Metaphysics of Concepts

Journal of the Learning Sciences, 2005

Concepts and categories are the building blocks of cognition. They allow us to interpret our experiences, to connect them to prior knowledge, to reason and to make predictions. One could not imagine a theory of learning without a theory of concepts, and sure enough psychologists have been concerned about concepts and categories for a long time now. As we all know, there are three main psychological theories about concepts. Following Smith and Medin (1981), we can distinguish the classical view, i.e., that concepts are defined by certain necessary and sufficient properties, from the prototype and exemplar views, i.e., that concepts are represented by a prototype or a specific exemplar. More recently psychologists have developed various theory-based views according to which concepts are embedded in theory-like structures that constrain them. Geoffrey Bowker and Susan Leigh Star in Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences, and Jerry Fodor in Concepts: Where Cognitive Science Went Wrong, come to tell us that these three approaches to concepts and categories are completely wrong and that we should throw them in the waste basket. Even more interesting is