Categories and Concepts

(3 Credits)

This course covers the major topics in the psychology of concepts. The focus is on central issues of concept representation and use. The first part of the course discusses the “traditional” questions of the past 15 years, such as prototype vs. exemplar theories and computational models of category learning. Then the course addresses questions of how concepts are integrated with and constrained by more general knowledge. Other topics include similarity, expertise, induction, and conceptual combination. Developmental perspectives on these topics are considered throughout the course.