Thinking

Activity . If you will try the above activity with a group of small children, you will observe that there are a number of ways in which the child would respond. S/he would pile them up into different groups based on: . size: all small triangles, squares, and circles together, all medium sized together, and so on.

. shape: all triangles together, all circles together, and so on . colour: all reds together, all yellows together, and so on . both size and shape: all small triangles together, all medium triangles together, and so on.

. size, shape and colour: all small circles of red colour together, all medium circles of yellow colour together, and so on. You have already learned about concept learning in Chapter , and the use of concepts in Human Memory in Chapter . Concepts usually fall into hierarchies or levels of understanding.

The levels are classified as superordinate (the highest level), basic (an intermediate level), and subordinate (the lowest level). While speaking we mostly use basic level concepts. When a person says, “I saw a dog” a basic level is used. Such a statement is much more likely to be made than Fig.

.2b : A Blank Map Up Side Down category of “chair” otherwise under the category of “table”. Consider another example: the concept ‘cup’. Cups : (i) are concrete objects, (ii) are concave, (iii) can hold solids and liquids, (iv) have handles. What about cups we see in the market: with no handle, with a square shape or unusually big in size?

In an experiment, the participants were shown the pictures of cups as in Fig. . and W. Labov asked them: which of these would you describe as the prototype for the concept “cup”?

Participants mostly chose number . Interestingly, some participants call number a bowl and number a vase because they were so different. “I saw a four legged animal that barks and wags its tail” or “an animal”. The first (subordinate) is far too specific than is needed for conversation, while the second (superordinate) is far too vague to convey the intended message.

Children also learn basic level concepts first and then the other levels. Most of the concepts people use in thinking are neither clear nor unambiguous. They are fuzzy. They overlap one another and are often poorly defined.

For example, under which category would you put a small stool? Would you put it under the category of ‘chair’ or under the category of ‘table’? The answer to these questions is that we construct a model or prototype . A prototype is the best representative member of the category.

Eleanor Rosch argues that in considering how people think about concepts, prototypes are often involved in real life. In prototype matching, people decide whether an item is a member of a category by comparing it with the most typical item(s) of the category. Therefore, in the above example of the stool, you would try to compare it with a standard study chair (if you consider it as the typical example of a chair) and a small study table (if you consider it as the typical example of a table) and then match the properties of the stool with these two concepts. If it matches with a chair you would put it under the Our beliefs, values, and social practices influence the way we think.

In a study conducted on American and Asian students, pictures like the following (underwater scene) were used. The subjects were asked to have a look at the scene for a brief period and then were asked to describe what they saw. The American students focussed on the biggest, brightest, and most outstanding features (for example, “the large fish swimming to the right”). In contrast, the Japanese students focussed on the background (for example, “the bottom was rocky” or “the water was green”).

Based on these kinds of findings, researchers concluded that Americans usually analyse each .