We are forever trying to carve nature at its joints, dividing it into categories so that we can
make sense of the world. If we see a particular child pet a particular dog at a particular time …

Abstract explore two particularly important consequences of the general approach to
categorization/(1) that our cognitive constructs are, nearly always, about the world (and not …

Chapter 2,'What are categories and concepts?'introduces readers to some of the major
vocabulary terms that will be used by authors of the subsequent chapters. It begins by …

Issues related to concepts and categorization are nearly ubiquitous in psychology because
of people's natural tendency to perceive a thing as something. We have a powerful impulse …

It has been said that psychology has a long past but a short history. Nowhere is this
observation more apt than in the psychology of concepts. The study of concepts and …

Originally published in 1978, the papers in this book derive from a 1976 meeting sponsored
by the Social Science Research Council to discuss the nature and principles of category …

In this chapter, the author notes that the intuitive idea that we put things into categories
because we find them similar appears to be non-controversial, if not circular. Cars are …

For the past 15 years my research has concentrated on how infants form their first concepts.
Because forming a concept usually involves forming a category, I often call concepts …

Categorizations which humans make of the concrete world are not arbitrary but highly
determined. In taxonomies of concrete objects, there is one level of abstraction at which the …

Even informal observation of everyday categorization reveals that many objects fit into a
number of categories. A single object might be called a wire-haired terrier, terrier, dog …