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Cognitive Science Series, 4 Editorial Board Robert Abelson Janellen Huttenlocher John Anderson Jerome Kagan Ned Block Daniel Kahneman Daniel Bobrow Ronald Kaplan Gordon Bower William Kessen Joan Bresnan Walter Kintsch Ann Brown Stephen Kosslyn Roger Brown George Miller Susan Carey Ulric Neisser Wallace Chafe Donald Norman Noam Chomsky Daniel Osherson Eve Clark Barbara Hall Partee Herbert Clark Hilary Putnam Michael Cole Lee Ross Roy D'Andrade David Rumelhart Donald Davidson John Searle Charles Fillmore Marilyn Shatz Jerry Foder Dan Slobin Donald Foss Edward Smith Merrill Garrett Ann Treisman Rochel Gelman Amos Tversky Lila Gleitman David Waltz Marshall Haith Patrick Winston Gilbert Harman Cognitive Science Series 1. Frank C. Keil, Semantic and Conceptual Development: An On- tological Perspective 2. Edwin Hutchins, Culture and Inference: A Trobriand Case Study 3. William E. Cooper and Jeanne Paccia-Cooper, Syntax and Speech 4. Edward E. Smith and Douglas L. Medin, Categories and Con- cepts Categories and Concepts Edward E. Smith and Douglas L. Medin Harvard University Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England 1981 Copyright © 1981 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Smith, Edward E„ 1940- Categories and concepts. (Cognitive science series ; 4) Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Concepts. 2. Categorization (Psychology) 3. Cognition. 4. Psycholinguistics. I. Medin, Douglas L. II. Title. III. Series. BF311.S58 153.23 81-4629 ISBN 0-674-10275-4 AACR2 To our parents, Harry and Bessie Smith, Kenneth and Pauline Medin To Linda Powers and To William K. Estes (who believes in the progress of psychology) Preface This book had its inception at Rockefeller University in 1977. Medin was then on the faculty of Rockefeller; Smith was visiting there for a sabbatical year. We spent a lot of time talking about re- search on concepts and categories, and we both felt that the psy- chological literature in this area was extremely stimulating, yet thoroughly muddled. What was stimulating was that researchers, particularly Eleanor Rosch at Berkeley, were reporting findings that suggested the view of concepts we had inherited from Aristotle was severly lacking and needed to be replaced by a theory based on pro- totypes. What was muddling was that no two researchers seemed to mean the same thing by prototype, nor was there much agree- ment on exactly which findings impugned Aristotle's notion of con- cepts. We decided it would be worthwhile to try to get these issues straight (or straighter). We decided to "review the literature" sys- tematically; the review grew into this book. Along the way, several people have contributed to this book. Bill Estes provided a supportive environment that year at Rockefeller, and he has continued to encourage our efforts. Eric Wanner, our editor at Harvard Press, was the one who initially suggested that we turn our would-be literature review into a book. He provided valuable criticism on all our preliminary drafts, as well as needed encouragement when our progress was slowed by job changes (Medin moved from Rockefeller to Illinois, Smith from Stanford to Bolt, Beranek and Newman in Cambridge) and other inevitable ex- igencies. Current and former colleagues also left their mark on this book. Carolyn Mervis, Andrew Ortony, and Ed Shoben, all colleagues of Medin at Illinois, read early drafts of some of the chapters and made helpful comments. And while at Stanford, Smith benefited from ideas about concepts from a host of colleagues —Gordon viii Preface Bower, Eve Clark, Herb Clark, Ellen Markman, Dan Osherson, Roger Shepard, and Amos Tversky. A particularly fertile source of ideas was an advanced seminar on categorization that Smith jointly taught with Tversky in 1978, where the "students" included no fewer than twenty-five distinguished faculty from various univer- sities. Many thanks are due to those who did the typing: Ruth Colwell at Illinois, Annie Edmonds at Stanford, and Norma Peterson at Bolt, Beranek and Newman. We would also like to acknowledge the National Institute of Mental Health (Grants MH-19705 and MH-32370) and the Na- tional Institute of Education (Contract No. US-NIE-C-400- 76-0116) for supporting our research efforts. Figure 5 was originally published in L. J. Rips, E. J. Shoben, and ?. E. Smith, "Semantic Distance and the Verification of Semantic Relations," Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 12 (1973), 1-20, and is reproduced by permission of Academic Press.
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