The Typicality Ranking Task: A New Method to Derive Typicality Judgments from Children

Abstract

An alternative method for deriving typicality judgments, applicable in young children that are not familiar with numerical values yet, is introduced, allowing researchers to study gradedness at younger ages in concept development. Contrary to the long tradition of using rating-based procedures to derive typicality judgments, we propose a method that is based on typicality ranking rather than rating, in which items are gradually sorted according to their typicality, and that requires a minimum of linguistic knowledge. The validity of the method is investigated and the method is compared to the traditional typicality rating measurement in a large empirical study with eight different semantic concepts. The results show that the typicality ranking task can be used to assess children’s category knowledge and to evaluate how this knowledge evolves over time. Contrary to earlier held assumptions in studies on typicality in young children, our results also show that preference is not so much a confounding variable to be avoided, but that both variables are often significantly correlated in older children and even in adults.

Visual free recall and recognition in art students and laypeople

“…The hierarchical ordering method used in the study us to compare all drawings of the same image altogether. This method has been used for other complex decisions regarding stimulus similarity such as measuring the global properties of the scenes (Greene & Oliva, 2009) or typicality ratings (Djalal et al, 2016). In the context of measuring typicality, this method produced higher interrater agreement than traditional ratings of each stimulus using an ordered scale (Barsalou, 1989).…”

A Frame-Theoretic Model of Bayesian Category Learning

“…The question of what attribute-value pairs are the most diagnostic for any given (sensory) input or object is an empirical question which we would like to pursue further. Such empirical research is usually undertaken by considering typicality judgements or typicality rankings(Djalal et al 2016;Rips 1989). …”