Recent views of conceptual structure.

Abstract

This article reviews theories of concept structure proposed since the mid-1970s, when the discovery of typicality effects led to the rejection of the view that instances of a concept share necessary and sufficient attributes. To replace that classical view, psychologists proposed the family resemblance and exemplar views (and hybrids of the 2), which argue that instances of a concept share a certain level of overall similarity, rather than necessary and sufficient attributes. These similaritybased views account for much of the typicality data but fail to provide an adequate explanation of the coherence of conceptual categories and of various context effects. Recently proposed explanation-based accounts address these issues but raise further questions about the distinction between concept-specific information and general knowledge and about the relationship between conceptual knowledge and various forms of inference.