ISOLATED AND INTERRELATED CONCEPTS

A continuum between purely isolated and purely interrelated concepts i s described. Along this continuum, a concept is interrelated to the ex tent that it is influenced by other concepts. Methods for manipulating and identifying a concept's degree of interrelatedness are introduced . Relatively isolated concepts can be empirically identified by a rela tively large use of nondiagnostic features, and by better categorizati on performance for a concept's prototype than for a caricature of the concept. Relatively interrelated concepts can be identified by minimal use of nondiagnostic features, and by better categorization performan ce for a caricature than for a prototype. A concept is likely to be re latively isolated when subjects are instructed to create images for th eir concepts rather than find discriminating features, when concepts a re given unrelated labels, and when the categories that are displayed alternate rarely between trials. The entire set of manipulations and m easurements supports a graded distinction between isolated and interre lated concepts. The distinction is applied to current models of catego ry learning, and a connectionist framework for interpreting the empiri cal results is presented.