Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Despite people's strong bias to sort exemplars based on a single dimension, various situations where family resemblance (FR) categories tend to be created have been identified. In a previous study (Ahn 1990b), knowing prototypes or theories underlying categories led subjects to create FR categories. The current study investigates why existence of background knowledge encourages creation of F R categories. Comparison of results from two experiments indicates that there is no intrinsic tie between knowing theories or prototypes and F R structure. The role of background knowledge on FR sorting seems to lie in leading subjects to weight dimensions equally, in helping them to infer unavailable values in favor or F R sorting, and / or in relating surface dimensions in terms of a deeper feature.