248 • CHAPTER 9 Knowledge
levels. She distinguished three levels of categories: the superordinate level, which we will
call the global level (for example, “furniture”), the basic level (for example, “table”), and
the subordinate level, which we will call the specifi c level (for example, “kitchen table”).
The following demonstration illustrates some characteristics of the different levels.DEMONSTRATION Listing Common Features
This demonstration is a repeat of the task you did in the Family Resemblance demonstration
on page 244, but with diff erent categories. For the following categories, list as many features
as you can that would be common to all or most of the objects in the category. For example, for
“table” you might list “has legs.”- furniture
- table
- kitchen table
If you responded like the participants in the Rosch, Mervis, and coworkers (1976)
experiment, who were given the same task, you listed only a few features that were com-
mon to all furniture, but many features that were shared by all tables and by all kitchen
tables. Rosch’s participants listed an average of 3 common features for the global level
category “furniture,” 9 for basic level categories such as “table,” and 10.3 for specifi c level
categories such as “kitchen table” (● Figure 9.9).
Rosch reasoned that because a greater number of features
provides more information about a category, starting at the basic
level and moving up to the global level causes the loss of a lot of
information (9 features at the basic level versus 3 features at the
global level). However, going from basic to specifi c provides a
gain of only a little information (9 features versus 10.3 features).
Rosch proposed that the basic level is psychologically
special because going above it (to global) results in a large
loss of information and going below it (to specifi c) results
in little gain of information. Here is another demonstration
that is relevant to the idea of a basic level.DEMONSTRATION Naming Things
Look at ● Figure 9.10 and, as quickly as possible, write down or
say a word that identifi es each picture.What names did you assign to each object? When Rosch,
Mervis, and coworkers (1976) did a similar experiment, they
found that people tended to pick a basic level name. They
said “guitar” (basic level) rather than musical instrument
(global) or rock guitar (specifi c), “fi sh” rather than animal or
trout, and “pants” rather than clothing or jeans.
In another experiment, Rosch, Simpson, and Miller (1976)
showed participants a category label, such as “car” or “vehi-
cle,” and then, after a brief delay, presented a picture. The par-
ticipants’ task was to indicate, as rapidly as possible, whether
the picture was a member of the category. The results showed
that they accomplished this task more rapidly for basic level
categories (such as car) than for global level categories (such as
vehicle). Thus, they would respond “yes” more rapidly when● FIGURE 9.9 Category levels, examples of each level, and
average number of common features listed by participants in
Rosch, Mervis, et al.’s (1976) experiment.Basic^9GlobalSpecificTableFurnitureKitchen table310.3Gain just
a little
information.Lose a
lot of
information.LEVEL EXAMPLENUMBER OF
COMMON FEATURES● FIGURE 9.10 Stimuli for the Naming Things demonstration.Copyright 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part.