Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research and Everyday Experience, 3rd Edition

How Are Objects Placed Into Categories? • 245

nonprototypical members. The procedure for Rosch’s experiment is shown in ● Figure 9.6.

Participants fi rst heard the prime, which was the name of a color, such as “green.” Two sec-

onds later they saw a pair of colors side by side and indicated, by pressing a key as quickly

as possible, whether the two colors were the same or different.

The side-by-side colors were paired in three

different ways: (1) Colors were the same and

were good examples of the category (primary

reds, blues, greens, etc.; Figure 9.6a); (2) colors

were the same, but were poor examples of the

category (less rich versions of the good colors,

such as light blue, light green, etc.; Figure 9.6b);

(3) colors were different, with the two colors

coming from different categories (for example,

pairing orange with blue; Figure 9.6c).

The most important result occurred for the

two “same” groups, because in this condition,

priming resulted in faster “same” judgments for

the prototypical (good) colors (reaction time,

RT = 610 ms) than to the nonprototypical (poor)

colors (RT = 780 ms). Thus, when participants

heard the word green, they judged two patches

of primary green as being the same more rapidly

than two patches of light green.

Rosch explains this result as follows:

When participants hear the word green, they

imagine a “good” (highly prototypical) green

(● Figure 9.7a). The principle behind priming

is that the prime will facilitate the participants’

● FIGURE 9.6 Procedure for Rosch’s (1975b) priming experiment. Results for the

conditions when the test colors were the same are shown on the right. (a) The person’s

“green” prototype matches the good green, but (b) is a poor match for the light green.

780 ms

610 ms

Hear

“green”

Same color — good examples

Same color — poor examples

Different color

Test

Reaction time

Prime for “same” or “different”

(a)

(b)

(c)

● FIGURE 9.7 How Rosch explains the fi nding that priming resulted in faster

“same” judgments for prototypical colors than for nonprototypical colors.

Prototype

for green

“Green”

(a)

Good match

Poor

match

(b)

(c)

Copyright 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part.