Chapter 9: PowerPoint Questions

5. Which of the following is NOT true of category knowledge? a)Category judgments are influenced by typicality. b)Judgments of resemblance will override our beliefs about categories. c)We are more likely to generalize about a category from typical cases than from atypical cases. d)Our beliefs and prior knowledge can influence how quickly we learn new concepts.

Answer: B Feedback: When making a judgment about category membership, we rely partly on judgments of resemblance (e.g., how similar is this item to other exemplars or prototypes that I've seen?). That judgment of resemblance, though, depends on other knowledge, and beliefs about essential properties can be more important than resemblance alone in deciding category membership.

2. Which of the following is true? a)People only use prototypes when there are no clear definitions to fall back on. b)Just because people use prototypes does not mean that this is the only information available to them. c)People use exemplars rather than prototypes whenever possible. d)Clearly defined category boundaries are necessary for deciding category membership.

Correct answer: b Feedback: Generally, prototypes may be used in situations where exemplars are available as well.

3. In a production task, the __________ category members that a person mentions are the category members that produce the slowest reaction times in a sentence verification task. a)first b)last c)loudest d)slowest

Correct answer: b Feedback: The first members produced are usually the prototypes, and hence those most tightly linked to a category. The last members will be more loosely linked, and hence will be last. Generally, the more prototypical members are also those that are the fastest to be verified as belonging to the category.

1.According to Wittgenstein, a)we have no real general concept for each category that we know but instead learn each category member individually. b)we assess category membership probabilistically, based on family resemblance. c)we can find rigid features that define a category but only after intensive study. d)we first encounter the prototypical member of a category and then compare all other potential members to it.

Correct answer: b Feedback: Wittgenstein developed the idea of family resemblance within categories rather than all-or-none categories based on definitions.

4. The idea that we categorize objects based on their similarity to specifically stored instances is known as __________ theory. a)geometric b)prototype c)feature d)exemplar

Correct answer: d Feedback: Exemplars are instances of an item. The idea is that we store these examples in our memory.