Features do not tell the full story

The present research proposes an alternative method, based on family resemblance scores of the category members, to examine the relationship between category intensions and extensions in children and adults. Feature generation and category judgment tasks were used to investigate the intensions and extensions. Family resemblance measures were then correlated with category judgments. The results showed that the prediction of category judgments can be considerably approved if features generated by all age groups are used. This mean that, in categorizing items, children also used features that they did not generate. Furthermore, the correlation between family resemblance and category judgment declines from the oldest children to the adults in 5 out of 8 categories. These findings suggest that category learning is not exclusively based on feature-based representations, but also on the language specificities that play a role in the later stages of lexical development.status: publishe