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Chapter 10 – Short Answer3. Consider the concept of an apple. Match the concept label with its label within a conceptual hierarchy.(a) Basic level _____(b) Superordinate level _____(c) Subordinate level _____Golden delicious (c)Fruit (b)Apple (a)6. Summarize the methods and conclusions from the Allen and Brooks (1991) study.The researchers presented participants with a set of fictional creatures, systematically manipulating the features of the creatures and the context in which they were presented. Some of the participants were told a “rule” that could be used to categorize the creatures into two groups. The rest of the participants had to figure out the rule. After a period of training to categorize the creatures into the two groups, the participants were given new examples of the creatures to categorize. The new creatures varied to the extent that they were similar to either a prototype of one of the creature types, or similar to particular exemplars in the training set. The results of the study suggested that participants used similarity to past exemplars more than similarity to prototypes.7. Summarize the methods and conclusions from the Lin and Murphy (1997) study.The researchers presented participants with pictures of artificial tools and background stories about how the tools were used. The stories emphasized the importance of different features of the pictured tool (e.g., one story may highlight the important functionality of a cone shaped part, while another may highlight an important loop part. In a learning phase of the study, participants were given examples and asked to categorize them as particular types of tools. The results demonstrated that the participants considered the functional purposes of the tools to make their decisions about what categories the tools belonged to. 8. Compare and contrast the exemplar and prototype views of concepts.Both views propose that category membership relies on comparing features of objects to mental representations of similar objects. However, the prototype view proposes that the mental comparison object is an abstract representation constructed from all past experiences. In contrast, the exemplar view proposes that the mental comparisons are individual memories of past experiences (rather than a single combined abstraction).9. Why is the lack of transitive inheritance properties (Hampton, 1982) a problem for the Collins and Quillian (1969) model?To maintain cognitive economy, the Collins and Quillian model proposed that features shared by all members of a category need not be stored for each individual member of the category, but rather could be represented at the level of the category itself. Category members would inherit those features by virtue of being members of the category. Hampton (1982) demonstrated that this inheritance does not always work as predicted by the Collins and Quillian model. For example, if a beanbag is a chair, and a chair is a type of furniture, then beanbags should inherit the properties of furniture. However, Hampton’s results indicated that his participants did not always agree with statements like a beanbag is furniture. 10. How does expertise in an area impact our conceptual representations?Experts have more experience within their domain of expertise compared to novices. This experience typically includes encountering more exemplars and having richer detailed theories of how objects (and their features) are related within the domain. This may lead to shifts in what they consider basic levels of their conceptual hierarchies, as well as other differences in how their concepts (within the domain of expertise) are structured.11. How are stereotypes similar to other concept representations? Some researchers have proposed that stereotypes are a kind of prototype representation of social categories. For example, when we are trying to categorize an object as either a fruit or an animal we do so by comparing the features of the object to the features typically associated with the categories of fruits and animals. If we decide that the object is a fruit, we may infer that it has other properties of fruits that we may not have directly observed in it. Using stereotypes may operate in a similar fashion. When we meet somebody new, we may attempt to classify them into a particular social category based on a set of observed features. Once we classify them as belonging to a particular category, we may infer that they have other features that are typically shared by members of that category. ................
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