Thematic relations in adults' concepts and categorization

"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."

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Psychology

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2011

Author dc:creator

• Lin, Emilie Li-Chun

Contributors dc:contributor

• Murphy, Gregory L.

• Psychology, Developmental
• Psychology, Experimental
• Psychology, Cognitive

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 1996 Lin, Emilie Li-Chun

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

9780591088526
AAI9702584
(UMI)AAI9702584

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/19076