Prototypes and particulars: Geometric and experience-dependent spatial categories

People use geometric cues to form spatial categories. This study investigated whether people also use the spatial distribution of exemplars. Adults pointed to remembered locations on a tabletop. In Experiment 1, a target was placed in each geometric category, and the location of targets was varied. Adults ’ responses were biased away from a midline category boundary toward geometric prototypes located at the centers of left and right categories. Experiment 2 showed that prototype effects were not influenced by cross-category interactions. In Experiment 3, subsets of targets were positioned at different locations within each category. When prototype effects were removed, there was a bias toward the center of the exemplar distribution, suggesting that common categorization processes operate across spatial and object domains. Categorization is a ubiquitous phenomenon seen across a variety of domains. This basic human ability affects how people judge one another (Rothbart, Davis-Stitt, & Hill, 1997), how they remember the properties of objects and events (Huttenlocher, Hedges, & Prohaska, 1988; Rosch, Simpson, & Miller, 1976), and even how they organize actions in local space (e.g., in a fire, grab the item