The roles of independent and correlated properties in real world object concepts were explored. Property norms were collected for 190 natural kinds and artifacts. The norms were used to design behavioral experiments and computational models of concept similarity. Property intercorrelations influenced performance in property verification. Concept similarity, as measured by overlap of independent properties, predicted similarity ratings, speeded same/different category decision latency, and short interval priming latency. Concept similarity, as measured by overlap of correlated properties, predicted same/different category decision latency and short interval priming for natural kinds. It was concluded that people encode knowledge about independent and correlated properties of real-world objects. The influence of property intercorrelations is stronger for natural kinds because natural kinds contain a higher proportion of correlated properties. In the investigation of short interval semantic priming, results suggested that semantic relatedness can be defined in terms of property overlap between concepts.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.70271 |
| Date | January 1991 |
| Creators | McRae, Ken, 1962- |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of Psychology.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001271100, proquestno: AAINN74576, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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