The Typicality Effect

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that the purpose of this study was to examine some of the characteristics of typicality, with regard to proto-typically versus non-proto-typically, category blocking, and interaction between typicality and category blocking. The authors tested three hypotheses: (1) Prototypical word lists will be recalled better than non-prototypical word lists. (2) Category blocking will demonstrate better recall rates than random retrieval. (3) Some interaction will exist between typicality and category blocking. The paper reports that there were ninety-one subjects participating in this survey, divided roughly evenly between males and females. The author concludes that the main effects of the hypotheses all proved to be significant, while the interaction was not significant.

Table of Contents:
Abstract
Introduction
Discussion

From the Paper:

"Typicality is a simpler concept to understand than it might at first seem. Loken and Ward (1990) define typicality as the degree to which an object is representative of a given category. This basic and fundamental relationship exists between typicality and categories. For instance, a newborn canary might be considered less typical of the canary category than his fellow nestling if said canary sports blue feathers instead of yellow. This example is that of an atypical individual, one that does not easily fit into our preconceived notions of what constitutes a typical member of a group."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Burt, C.D. (1993). The effect of actual event duration and event memory on the reconstruction of duration information. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 7, pp. 63-77.
• Chaffin, R. (1981). Context effects in the categorization task. The Journal of General Psychology, 104, pp. 293-302.
• Chin-Parker, S. and Ross, B.H. (2002). The effect of categoryu learning on sensitivity to within-category correlations. Memory & Cognition, 30(3), pp. 353-362.
• Hampton, J.A. and Cannon, I. (2004). Category-based induction: an effect of conclusion typicality. Memory & Cognition, 32(2), pp. 235-243.
• Katz, A.N. (1981). Knowing about the sensory properties of objects. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 33(A), pp. 39-49.

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