Universität Bielefeld - Sonderforschungsbereich 360
Isolated and Interrelated Concepts
Robert Goldstone,
Indiana University
Modern research on human concept representation has evolved from two traditions. One
tradition relates concepts to language (to know a concept is to be able to use a word) and
has stressed how concepts are interconnected to each other. Another tradition relates
concepts to object perception (to know a concept is to be able to correctly categorize
perceptual inputs) and treats concepts as independent detectors. The goal of this talk is to
unite these approaches by considering concepts to be both perceptually grounded and linked to
other concepts. To this end, a series of experiments will be described that manipulate and
measure the degree of isolation/interrelatedness of learned visual concepts. These
experiments explore the categorization of prototypical and caricatured objects, and the
importance of diagnostic and nondiagnostic object features for categorization. A recurrent
neural network model is proposed in which concept units are connected to each other as well
as to perceptual inputs, and can dynamically influence each other. This model provides an
account of conceptual interrelatedness and isolation, and is applied to results obtained from
psychology experiments.
Robert Goldstone is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology and Program
in Cognitive Science at Indiana University. He is on the editorial board of Journal of
Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, and has been named a Gill
Fellow in Cognitive Science.
Current research interests: representation and learning of concepts
(including people's acquisition of visually presented concepts,
interactions between developing concepts, the influence of concepts
on perception, and concept specialization/differentiation; computer
simulations (often times, neural network models) to model concept
formation and the two-way interaction between our conceptual and
perceptual systems); judgment, decision making, and comparison
processes involving similarity and analogy.
Anke Weinberger, 1997-10-24