THE EFFECTS OF PRIOR PROCESSING EPISODES ON BASIC-LEVEL SUPERIORITY

Four experiments were conducted to investigate the effects of prior pr ocessing episodes on people's preference for categorizing objects at t he basic level (e.g. dog) relative to their preference for categorizin g at the superordinate (e.g. animal) and the subordinate (e.g. Dalmati on) levels. The prior processing episode in Experiment 1 was designed to induce subjects to activate representations at the superordinate le vel, and those in the remaining experiments were designed to induce su bjects to differentiate objects at the subordinate level. After the pr ior processing episodes, subjects performed either a free naming or a picture categorization task that required them to decide whether an il lustrated object belonged to a specified category. Results showed that prior processing episodes modestly reduced the superiority of basic l evel to superordinate level and subordinate level in categorization bu t not in free naming. The results suggest that the basic-level advanta ge is subject to the effects of context, but the effects are not as st rong as the context effects on other aspects of categorization behavio ur (e.g. rating typicality of a category member). Hence, the preferenc e for the basic level is a somewhat more stable, invariant aspect of c onceptual representation. Possible determinations of this stability ar e discussed.