Date of Award
1978
Document Type
Thesis
Publication Status
Version of Record
Submission Date
October 2026
Abstract
Natural language categories are considered as concepts which can be described in terms of a prototype, wit h some category i terns more "typical" of their categories than others . One hypothesis tested was that typicality effects on free recall performance were due to atypical items not being encoded by their category labels. An alternative hypothesis argues that the structural base behind typicality effects is "family resemblances" (feature overlap). In the task, subjects were given either a list of typical or atypical items for three study/recall trials. Further, one half of the subjects in each materials condition received category cues at input to test the differential encoding hypothesis. The results showed large typicality effects in the no cue condition. However, there were small typicality effects in the cue condition. These results were interpreted as indicating that typicality effects on a free recall performance task are largely eliminated when category coding is relatively complete. Thus, the feature overlap hypothesis cannot be accepted.
Extent
60 p.
Recommended Citation
GREENBERG, MICHAEL STEVEN, "FREE RECALL AND CLUSTERING OF TYPICAL AND ATYPICAL CATEGORY EXEMPLARS" (1978). Electronic Theses and Dissertations 1970 - 1979. 631.
https://digitalcommons.fau.edu/etd_general_2/631
Identifier
FADT13933
Comments
Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 1978.|
Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 1978.