prototype

Examples of prototype in the following topics:

• Classification and Categorization

  • Prototype theory is a different way of classifying objects.
  • Essentially, a person has a "prototype" for what an object is; so a person's prototype for DOG may be a mental image of a dog they knew as a child.
  • Their prototype would be their mental idea of a "typical dog."
  • Prototype theory is not binary; instead it uses graded membership.
  • Under prototype theory, all treelike things will be judged based on an individual's prototype of a tree.

• Decision Making

  • An individual object or person has a high representativeness for a category if that object or person is very similar to a prototype of that category.