Fuzzy sets and Prototype Theory

Abstract

Prototype Theory offers one of the most accepted models for semantic memory organization. Lexical availability trials provide investigators with a faster and easier means of observing this cognitive organization, since lists of available lexicon are generated from associations relating some lexical elements with others. The experiments with lexical availability are able to activate one of the best-known lexical production mechanisms within experimental psychology: semantic category fluency. In this work we propose the appropriate means to reconstruct the community cognitive organization. This shared metastructure constitutes the concept of shared field of experience used as the base for availability trials. The key notion is the prototypicality of common vocabulary as the base for the construction of community models. To obtain a representation of these prototypes we use the mathematical framework of fuzzy sets.