Feature integration in natural language concepts

Abstract

Two experiments measured the joint influence of three key sets of semantic features on the frequency with which artifacts (Experiment 1) or plants and creatures (Experiment 2) were categorized in familiar categories. For artifacts, current function outweighed both originally intended function and current appearance. For biological kinds, appearance and behavior, an inner biological function, and appearance and behavior of offspring all had similarly strong effects on categorization. The data were analyzed to determine whether an independent cue model or an interactive model best accounted for how the effects of the three feature sets combined. Feature integration was found to be additive for artifacts but interactive for biological kinds. In keeping with this, membership in contrasting artifact categories tended to be superadditive, indicating overlapping categories, whereas for biological kinds, it was subadditive, indicating conceptual gaps between categories. It is argued that the results underline a key domain difference between artifact and biological concepts.

The real deal: What judgments of really reveal about how people think about artifacts

“…This conclusion is broadly compatible with other research suggesting that people treat artifacts differently from natural kinds and do not treat artifacts as if they have essences (e.g., Gelman, 1988;Hampton, Storms, Simmons, & Heussen, 2009;Kalish, 1995Kalish, , 2002Malt, 1990;Rhodes & Gelman, 2009). However, it goes beyond such literature, to question the notion of artifact kinds per se, and to suggest that intuitions about kind membership are in reality intuitions about the relation of objects to properties associated with the words of a language.…”

What words mean and express: semantics and pragmatics of kind terms and verbs

“…The concept has to also contain prototypical information, as well as information about ideals (see below). Perhaps this kind of information can be incorporated within the theory-like structure that I present (see Hampton, et al 2009, Bloch-Mullins, 2017, for proposals along these lines). At this point, I only aim at providing a possible explanation about a certain kind of polysemy of 'school' (the polysemy that affects the word in virtue of being about a social institution).…”

Sex Differences in Semantic Categorization

“…This effect is typically attributed to a domain difference in category representation. Whereas artifact categories are primarily represented according to their functions, which are mutable, natural categories tend to be represented according to their appearance and biological features, which are less mutable (e.g., Hampton, Storms, Simmons, & Heussen, 2009). More importantly for our purposes, this replication supports the validity of our sample.…”