The role of feature sharedness in the hierarchical organization of semantic knowledge

摘要

1. Introduction: When we talk about things, people or objects we can use different names and very often these names and concepts seem to be organized hierarchically, from subordinate (e.g. Dalmatian) to basic level (e.g. Dog) to superordinate concepts (e.g. Animal). Data from neuropsychological research suggest that categorizing objects at different levels of specificity requires different cognitive and neural processes. In this short paper we present and discuss a theoretical hypothesis for this organization in terms of feature sharedness.