The conceptual centrality of causal cycles.

Full Abstract

How do causal cycles affect judgments of conceptual centrality? Generally, a feature is central to a concept to the extent that other features in the concept depend on it, thereby rendering it immutable from the concept (Sloman, Love, & Ahn, 1998). Previous research on conceptual centrality has focused primarily on features involved in four major types of dependency structures: simple cause-effect relations, causal chains, common-cause structures, and common-effect structures. Causal cycles are a fifth type of dependency structure commonly reported in people's real-life concepts, yet to date, they have been relatively ignored in research on conceptual centrality. The results of six experiments suggest that previously held assumptions about the conceptual representation of cycles are incorrect. We discuss the implications of these findings for our understanding of theory-based concepts.

Author information

Author/s: Kim, Nancy S (NS); Luhmann, Christian C (CC); Pierce, Margaret L (ML); Ryan, Megan M (MM);

Affiliation: Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts 02115-5000, USA. n.kim(-atsign-)neu.edu

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article

Journal: Memory & cognition (Mem Cognit), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2009-Sep; vol 37 (issue 6) : pp 744-58

Dates: Created 2009/08/14; Completed 2009/10/19;

PMID: 19679855, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 10/19/2009, IMS Date: )

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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