{"id":{"repo_id":"uiuc","oai_identifier":"oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/19076"},"canonical_url":"https://search.dev.ndltd.org/etd/uiuc/oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/19076","repository":{"repo_id":"uiuc","name":"University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign","base_url":"https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh"},"display":{"title":"Thematic relations in adults' concepts and categorization","abstract":"\"Concepts can be interrelated by their similarities according to a taxonomic kind (e.g., animal, furniture) or by their external relations within scenes or events. This latter type of relation, known as the thematic relation, is frequently found to be the basis of children's classification but not adults' (e.g., given $\\{$bees, honey, flies$\\}$, children would group the bees with the honey but adults would group the bees with the flies). However, this thesis points out the limitations of this conclusion and demonstrates that meaningful, salient thematic relations do have significant effects on various forms of adults' conceptual thinking. Experiments 1-5 showed that whether the stimuli were verbal or pictorial, and whether subjects provided response justifications, they preferred to use thematic rather than taxonomic, similarity-based relations to construct categories 50-70% of the time. Experiments 6 and 7 showed that this preference can be reversed when subjects performed a similarity or difference judgment prior to each category construction. Experiment 8 showed that subjects also preferred to use thematic relations to infer properties like \"\"having bacteria.\"\" Finally, Experiment 9 showed that verification of a taxonomic category (e.g., whether CAMEL is an ANIMAL) can be facilitated by the prior activation of a concept thematically related to the target (e.g., DESERT). All these findings suggest that concepts function closely with knowledge of scenes and events, and the role of this knowledge in conceptual representation is a promising area for future research.\"","abstract_html":""Concepts can be interrelated by their similarities according to a taxonomic kind (e.g., animal, furniture) or by their external relations within scenes or events. This latter type of relation, known as the thematic relation, is frequently found to be the basis of children's classification but not adults' (e.g., given $\\{$bees, honey, flies$\\}$, children would group the bees with the honey but adults would group the bees with the flies). However, this thesis points out the limitations of this conclusion and demonstrates that meaningful, salient thematic relations do have significant effects on various forms of adults' conceptual thinking. Experiments 1-5 showed that whether the stimuli were verbal or pictorial, and whether subjects provided response justifications, they preferred to use thematic rather than taxonomic, similarity-based relations to construct categories 50-70% of the time. Experiments 6 and 7 showed that this preference can be reversed when subjects performed a similarity or difference judgment prior to each category construction. Experiment 8 showed that subjects also preferred to use thematic relations to infer properties like ""having bacteria."" Finally, Experiment 9 showed that verification of a taxonomic category (e.g., whether CAMEL is an ANIMAL) can be facilitated by the prior activation of a concept thematically related to the target (e.g., DESERT). All these findings suggest that concepts function closely with knowledge of scenes and events, and the role of this knowledge in conceptual representation is a promising area for future research."","abstract_has_math":true,"creators":["Lin, Emilie Li-Chun"],"institution":"University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign","degree_name":"Ph.D.","degree_level":"Dissertation","degree_discipline":"Psychology","degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":["Murphy, Gregory L."],"advisors":[],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2011,"date_issued":"2011-05-07T11:56:14Z","date_published":"2011-05-07T11:56:14Z","updated_at":"2026-07-22T22:25:12Z","subjects":["Psychology, Developmental","Psychology, Experimental","Psychology, Cognitive"],"languages":["eng"],"rights":["Copyright 1996 Lin, Emilie Li-Chun"],"rights_urls":[],"identifier_entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier","label":"Identifier","values":["9780591088526","AAI9702584","(UMI)AAI9702584"],"render_values":[{"text":"9780591088526","href":null,"code":true},{"text":"AAI9702584","href":null,"code":true},{"text":"(UMI)AAI9702584","href":null,"code":true}]}]},"links":{"outbound_url":"http://hdl.handle.net/2142/19076","outbound_label":"Handle","outbound_source":"dc:identifier"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:contributor","label":"Contributor","values":["Murphy, Gregory L."]},{"key":"dc:creator","label":"Author","values":["Lin, Emilie Li-Chun"]}]},{"id":"academic_context","label":"Academic Context","entries":[{"key":"dc:date","label":"Dc Date","values":["2011-05-07T11:56:14Z","10000-01-01","1996"]},{"key":"dc:type","label":"Dc Type","values":["text"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_discipline","label":"Discipline","values":["Psychology"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_level","label":"Degree Level","values":["Dissertation"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_name","label":"Degree Name","values":["Ph.D."]},{"key":"thesis:institution_name","label":"Thesis Institution Name","values":["University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign"]}]},{"id":"subjects_keywords","label":"Subjects and Keywords","entries":[{"key":"dc:subject","label":"Dc Subject","values":["Psychology, Developmental","Psychology, Experimental","Psychology, Cognitive"]}]},{"id":"language_rights","label":"Language and Rights","entries":[{"key":"dc:language","label":"Dc Language","values":["eng"]},{"key":"dc:rights","label":"Dc Rights","values":["Copyright 1996 Lin, Emilie Li-Chun"]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier","label":"Identifier","values":["9780591088526","AAI9702584","(UMI)AAI9702584","http://hdl.handle.net/2142/19076"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description","label":"Description","values":["\"Concepts can be interrelated by their similarities according to a taxonomic kind (e.g., animal, furniture) or by their external relations within scenes or events. This latter type of relation, known as the thematic relation, is frequently found to be the basis of children's classification but not adults' (e.g., given $\\{$bees, honey, flies$\\}$, children would group the bees with the honey but adults would group the bees with the flies). However, this thesis points out the limitations of this conclusion and demonstrates that meaningful, salient thematic relations do have significant effects on various forms of adults' conceptual thinking. Experiments 1-5 showed that whether the stimuli were verbal or pictorial, and whether subjects provided response justifications, they preferred to use thematic rather than taxonomic, similarity-based relations to construct categories 50-70% of the time. Experiments 6 and 7 showed that this preference can be reversed when subjects performed a similarity or difference judgment prior to each category construction. Experiment 8 showed that subjects also preferred to use thematic relations to infer properties like \"\"having bacteria.\"\" Finally, Experiment 9 showed that verification of a taxonomic category (e.g., whether CAMEL is an ANIMAL) can be facilitated by the prior activation of a concept thematically related to the target (e.g., DESERT). All these findings suggest that concepts function closely with knowledge of scenes and events, and the role of this knowledge in conceptual representation is a promising area for future research.\"","Made available in DSpace on 2011-05-07T11:56:14Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license.txt: 4922 bytes, checksum: 910b249b4beec47e7ab768910c8f966f (MD5) 9702584.pdf: 6696855 bytes, checksum: 1ab9f25fd3939180398ad906b152b0ba (MD5) Previous issue date: 1996","Item marked as restricted to the 'UIUC Users [automated]' Group (id=2) by Howard Ding (hding2@illinois.edu) on 2011-05-07T14:34:30Z Item is restricted indefinitely.","Restriction data tranferred 2014-07-01T11:13:12-05:00 Original Data Group with Access UIUC Users [automated] Release Date: none Reason: ETDs are only available to UIUC Users without author permission","ETDs are only available to UIUC Users without author permission","U of I Only"]},{"key":"dc:title","label":"Title","values":["Thematic relations in adults' concepts and categorization"]}]}],"canonical_facts":{"dc:contributor":["Murphy, Gregory L."],"dc:creator":["Lin, Emilie Li-Chun"],"dc:date":["2011-05-07T11:56:14Z","10000-01-01","1996"],"dc:description":["\"Concepts can be interrelated by their similarities according to a taxonomic kind (e.g., animal, furniture) or by their external relations within scenes or events. This latter type of relation, known as the thematic relation, is frequently found to be the basis of children's classification but not adults' (e.g., given $\\{$bees, honey, flies$\\}$, children would group the bees with the honey but adults would group the bees with the flies). However, this thesis points out the limitations of this conclusion and demonstrates that meaningful, salient thematic relations do have significant effects on various forms of adults' conceptual thinking. Experiments 1-5 showed that whether the stimuli were verbal or pictorial, and whether subjects provided response justifications, they preferred to use thematic rather than taxonomic, similarity-based relations to construct categories 50-70% of the time. Experiments 6 and 7 showed that this preference can be reversed when subjects performed a similarity or difference judgment prior to each category construction. Experiment 8 showed that subjects also preferred to use thematic relations to infer properties like \"\"having bacteria.\"\" Finally, Experiment 9 showed that verification of a taxonomic category (e.g., whether CAMEL is an ANIMAL) can be facilitated by the prior activation of a concept thematically related to the target (e.g., DESERT). All these findings suggest that concepts function closely with knowledge of scenes and events, and the role of this knowledge in conceptual representation is a promising area for future research.\"","Made available in DSpace on 2011-05-07T11:56:14Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license.txt: 4922 bytes, checksum: 910b249b4beec47e7ab768910c8f966f (MD5) 9702584.pdf: 6696855 bytes, checksum: 1ab9f25fd3939180398ad906b152b0ba (MD5) Previous issue date: 1996","Item marked as restricted to the 'UIUC Users [automated]' Group (id=2) by Howard Ding (hding2@illinois.edu) on 2011-05-07T14:34:30Z Item is restricted indefinitely.","Restriction data tranferred 2014-07-01T11:13:12-05:00 Original Data Group with Access UIUC Users [automated] Release Date: none Reason: ETDs are only available to UIUC Users without author permission","ETDs are only available to UIUC Users without author permission","U of I Only"],"dc:identifier":["9780591088526","AAI9702584","(UMI)AAI9702584","http://hdl.handle.net/2142/19076"],"dc:language":["eng"],"dc:rights":["Copyright 1996 Lin, Emilie Li-Chun"],"dc:subject":["Psychology, Developmental","Psychology, Experimental","Psychology, Cognitive"],"dc:title":["Thematic relations in adults' concepts and categorization"],"dc:type":["text"],"thesis:degree_discipline":["Psychology"],"thesis:degree_level":["Dissertation"],"thesis:degree_name":["Ph.D."],"thesis:institution_name":["University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign"]},"updated_at":"2026-07-22T22:25:12Z"}