Voorspoels Wouter, Storms Gert, Vanpaemel Wolf
Department of Psychology, K.U. Leuven, Belgium.
Acta Psychol (Amst). 2011 Sep;138(1):11-8. doi: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2011.04.007. Epub 2011 May 28.
The present study examines the influence of hierarchical level on category representation. Three computational models of representation - an exemplar model, a prototype model and an ideal representation model - were evaluated in their ability to account for the typicality gradient of categories at two hierarchical levels in the conceptual domain of clothes. The domain contains 20 subordinate categories (e.g., trousers, stockings and underwear) and an encompassing superordinate category (CLOTHES). The models were evaluated both in terms of their ability to fit the empirical data and their generalizability through marginal likelihood. The hierarchical level was found to clearly influence the type of representation: For concepts at the subordinate level, exemplar representations were supported. At the superordinate level, however, an ideal representation was overwhelmingly preferred over exemplar and prototype representations. This finding contributes to the increasingly dominant view that the human conceptual apparatus adopts both exemplar representations and more abstract representations, contradicting unitary approaches to categorization.
本研究考察了层次水平对类别表征的影响。评估了三种表征计算模型——范例模型、原型模型和理想表征模型——在解释服装概念领域两个层次水平上类别典型性梯度方面的能力。该领域包含20个从属类别（如裤子、长袜和内衣）以及一个涵盖性的上级类别（服装）。通过边际似然性从拟合实证数据的能力和可推广性两方面对模型进行了评估。研究发现层次水平对表征类型有明显影响：对于从属水平的概念，支持范例表征。然而，在上级水平上，理想表征比范例和原型表征更受青睐。这一发现支持了日益占主导地位的观点，即人类概念机制采用范例表征和更抽象的表征，这与单一的分类方法相矛盾。
