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Prototype Concepts (d) explain Fodor's problem of compositionality for…
Prototype Concepts
d) explain Fodor's problem of compositionality for prototype theory
- illustrate with the concept <Pet Fish>
- the problem of emergent properties of <Pet Fish> (SEP)
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concept <Pet Fish>
<Pet fish> is a complex concept, whose constituents are <pet> and <fish>
claim: prototype for <pet fish> is not a combination of prototypes for <pet> and <fish>
prototype for <pet fish> should be <goldfish>
but the statistical average for <pet> is <dog or cat> and the statistical average for <fish> is <trout or bass>
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a) know prototype theory of concepts + illustrate their psychological role with regard to categorization
prototype theory
concept have a structure that encodes a statistical analysis of the features that members of the represented class tend to posses
thus, a concept means a 'typical member' of class
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b) know some evidence for prototype theory, including typicality effects, the experiment by Posner and Keele, and results with speed and accuracy
evidence
- typicality effects = when X is judged to be more typical <something> than Y
eg. when <Robin> is judged to be more typical <Bird> than <Chicken> based on the feature list and statistic comparison
- experiment by Posner and Keele
subjects were shown a set of patterns of dots --> asked to sort them into categories --> later shown another set with new patterns of dots --> asked to sort them into the original categoriesresult: subjects performed best when the new patterns of dots (in second set) were close to the average pattern for the first sethypothesis: subject had computed + presented an average dot pattern -- an abstract idea like a prototype with statistical processing
- results with speed and accuracy
subjects perform better with concepts that rank high on a prototypical scale (eg. subjects are quicker to verify the sentence "a robin is a bird" than "an ostrich is a bird"
accumulator model:
- check each feature against a stored prototype, then add positive/negative value to an accumulator register
- when critical value is reached, system judge the instance of concept to be sufficiently similar to the prototype
- concepts with more features in common will reach critical value more quickly -- better reaction time