Question

According to the web module, What evidence is there to counter the prototype theory and why is it significant evidence?

1) When asked to identify whether a robin and penguin were birds, subjects took longer to identify the robin as a bird compared to the penguin because of the dissimilarity between a robin and their internal prototype.
2) When asked to identify whether a robin and penguin were birds, subjects took longer to identify the penguin as a bird compared to the robins because of the dissimilarity between a penguin and their internal prototype.
3) A recent exemplar did not affect categorization ability because, according to prototype theory, it should have merely been incorporated into the prototype and left performance uNaFfected.
4) A recent exemplar affected categorization ability but, according to prototype theory, should have merely been incorporated into the prototype - leaving categorization uNaFfected.

Answer 1

Option 2 shows evidence against prototype theory, as subjects took longer to identify a penguin as a bird, challenging the concept of mental prototypes aiding rapid categorization.

Step-by-step explanation:

The evidence to counter the prototype theory is option 2: When asked to identify whether a robin and penguin were birds, subjects took longer to identify the penguin as a bird compared to the robins because of the dissimilarity between a penguin and their internal prototype. This finding is significant because it challenges the prototype theory which suggests that individuals should be able to categorize objects quickly based on a mental image that best represents a category. Since penguins are not the conventional image when people think of birds, they are not as quickly recognized as such, despite both robins and penguins being categorized scientifically as birds.