Biomedical subjects

E J Wisniewski

Publications and source records attributed to E J Wisniewski.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed1996

On the equivalence of superordinate concepts.

Psychological studies of superordinates have generally treated them as equivalent. However, many languages distinguish mass superordinates (e.g., clothing) from count superordinates (e.g., vehicle). In the present paper, experimental evidence is presented which suggests that the two types of superordinates are conceptually distinct as well. One study showed that the members of mass superordinates more often co-occur. A second study showed that people more often interact with the members of mass superordinates in temporal proximity whereas people primarily interact with single members of count superordinates on a specific occasion. Also, properties that characterize an individual are a more salient aspect of count superordinates. These findings imply that mass superordinates refer to unindividuated groups of objects, united by spatial and functional contiguity. Two other studies supported this hypothesis by showing that the class inclusion relation between a single object and a category is stronger for count superordinates. Taken together, the findings suggest that mass superordinates are not true taxonomic categories. We relate the findings to previous views of superordinates and to the count/mass distinction in general.

Adult↗

PubMed1995

Prior knowledge and functionally relevant features in concept learning.

Empirical learning models have typically focused on statistical aspects of features (e.g., cue and category validity). In general, these models do not address the contact between people's prior knowledge that lies outside the category and their experiences of the category. A variety of extensions to these models are examined, which combine prior knowledge with empirical learning. Predictions of these models were compared in 4 experiments. These studies contrasted the cue and category validity of features with people's prior knowledge about the relevance of features to the functions of novel artifacts. The findings suggest that the influences of knowledge and experience are more tightly integrated than some models would predict. Furthermore, relatively straightforward ways of incorporating knowledge into an empirical learning algorithm appear insufficient (e.g., use of knowledge to weight features by general relevance or to individually weight features). Other extensions to these models are suggested that focus on the importance of intermediary features, coherence, and conceptual roles.

Adult↗

PubMed1989

Categorizing objects in isolation and in scenes: what a superordinate is good for.

Many studies have shown that subjects are faster at categorizing objects into "basic" concepts than into more general superordinate concepts. However, all of these studies have used a categorization task in which single, isolated objects are identified. There is good reason to believe that superordinate concepts are typically used to refer to collections of objects rather than to individual objects. For example, people more often use the term furniture to refer to a number of pieces of furniture rather than to name a single piece. This suggest that superordinate concepts include information about multiple objects and their common relations, particularly the typical scenes in which such objects appear. Four experiments examined this possibility by investigating whether the basic concept advantage will decrease or reverse itself when subjects are asked to categorize an object as part of a scene. The results showed that the basic-superordinate difference did decrease when subjects categorized objects in scenes. Furthermore, when an object was placed in an inappropriate scene, there was more interference for superordinate identifications. The results suggest qualitative differences in the representations of superordinate and basic concepts.

Adult↗