< Back to previous page

Publication

Feature taxonomy: What type of features do children associate with categories and how do they fare in predicting category judgments?

Journal Contribution - Journal Article

The present study investigates category intension in school-aged children and adults at two different levels of abstraction (i.e., superordinate and basic level) for two category types (i.e., artefacts and natural kinds). We addressed two critical questions: what kind of features do children and adults generate to define semantic categories and which features predict category membership judgment best at each abstraction level? Overall, participants generated relatively more entity features for natural kinds categories, compared to artefact categories, as well as for basic level categories, compared to superordinate categories. Furthermore, the results showed that older children and adults generated relatively more entity features than younger children. Finally, situation features play the most important role in the prediction of category judgments at both levels of abstraction. Theoretical implications and comparable results from previous studies are described in detail.
Journal: Acta Psychologica
ISSN: 0001-6918
Volume: 178
Pages: 114 - 123
Publication year:2017
BOF-keylabel:yes
IOF-keylabel:yes
BOF-publication weight:1
CSS-citation score:1
Authors from:Higher Education
Accessibility:Open