American Patheopele sist ‘ognition and Categorization. Eleanor Rosch nd Barbara B. Lloyd, eds. Hillsdale, NJ. awrence Erlbaum Associates, 1978. viii + $28 1p $16.50 (cloth). Eugene S. Hunn University of Washington This collection documents an intriguing in- stsection of anthropological and psychological tsearch and theorizing. The anthropological put is represented by Berlin's lead article, an troduction to his “general principles” for the gnitive peychologists and paycholinguists at snding an SSRC conference on the nature and Finciples of category formation, organized by ne editors of this volume. The volume docu: vents the conference proceedings. The ethno: ence tradition represented here by Berlin is ognized at key stimulus to the development fa "new paradigm of reference” in cognitive sscarch, the central tenet of which is that categorization, rather than being arbitrary, tay be predicted and explained” (p. vi). ‘The cognitive anthropological influence is vost direct. in Rosch’s “natural category” ssearch, Berlin's recognition of the special atus of folk generic taxa in folk biological lasification spurred Rosch's experimental cumentation of a "basic level of abstraction’ Thuman thought defined a8 “the most in- sive -- level at which the categories can fF the structure of attributes perceived in world” (p. $0). Basic-level categories are not tricted to plant and animal taxa, such as oak ‘accoon, but may aio include such man- ide objects as chairs and pianos. Basic level categories are distinguishable in perican Sign Language as well as is shown by ‘port and Bellugs In ASL, basic-level fegories contrast with both superordinate and ordinate categories by the use of primary ‘ns for the former and various compound sign 2es for the latter Basic level categories are not constructed by ‘erence to 2 perceptually arbitrary set of fining feacures (4 la componential analysis) xtead. the members of such categories have any comimon features and a high proportion features not shared by directly contrasting tegories. They are “polythetie concepts” with gh information content, and thus efficiently ode the structure of the world perceived. In- inces of sich categories are recognized not by ference to an analytical rule but by compar in with a prototype of some sort. ‘Tversky and Gati summarize experimental search demonstrating that perceived similar the proces underying any comparion of tens with prototypes is non-Euclidean, thus porting the authors’ feature:contrast model ‘mnilarty-difference judgments in which "che hilarity ofa to & is deseribed as a linear com: By TTS CD ination. of the measures oftheir comson nd diaincve features (p. 60). Their demon: Strain resus on evidence that similarity i not the precae comers of diference and tht sm tasty judgments are not aymeteical and ate Gamer dicusion ares the conan imposed on the clair response by the sue: tang of the sialan, He erties the Tack of Searenes among experimenters in peychology Of ceria hey dsincions relative to. the Stimulus, Le “component” verus "whol ropertcs af a aimulus, the former either Ffeltares” defined here ab inherently single valued thes. present or abint—oF “dimen oe” by conan, muvalued. Garner's fection of emergent, whole, configual Stimulus properties quite unexpectedly clarifie S poine wll hanging in the ehnoscence Tera tafe, that i he sence of reciprocity" a8 8 fearase of the meaning of Englah in terms (eg. a in undlenepheve, sce Romney and D’Andrade, 44 66, No. 8, Part 2, 146-170, 1964), despite the logical priority of underlying feavures such as “generation” and “lineality.” Garner notes that emergent configural attr Dutes (read “reciprocity") are necessarily logically nonindependent of component proper: tice (read “generation,” “linealty”) but will be preferred to-component properties in rapid cog’ nitive procesing ‘Shepp distinguishes the use of “integral” and “weparable” dimensions in constructing classifi ceations. He argues that integral dimensions (eg., “red” as hue + brightnest) “lead to redundancy gain when correlated and... pro- duce interference . .. when the [underlying] dimensions are orthogonal.” under speed of classification constraints (p. 135), whereas separable dimensions (e.g.. "red square” as col- ‘or + shape) do not. This allows the operational ‘differentiation of these two grouping strategies in experiments. He found that the use of separ able dimensions inereased with age and/or ‘schooling. Curiously, this increased use of separable dimensions in category formation reflected not 10 much increased cognitive capac: fty—for the youngest were capable of construct ing both kinds of groupings~but. rather. a changing preference for the separable of analytical approach, perhaps asa by-product of school instruction. ‘Much the same contrast is explored by Brooks in his comparison of “analytical” and “non: “analytical” processes. He notes that “in studying ‘concept identification, experimental psycholo: {ists have found it far easier co capture analytic than nonanalytic processes (p. 168). He notes research Gndings (eg.. studies of anificial {grammar learning) indicating that people can Successfully generalize without an. analytical basis. His own experiments show that nonanalyt- ical “analogical” reasoning, in which new in- stances are inferred on the basis oftheir overall similarity to specific prior examples, will pro- duce far better than chance performance on tests of concept learning. Brooks suggests that such nonanalytical reasoning is superior to analytical reasoning when the complexity of the underlying analytical rule exceeds short-term memory procesinglimjations, Analogical pro cesses might go a long! way toward explaining child language learning without recourse to elaborate language-specific mental wiring. Kossyin presents an {ntrospective analysis of mental imagery and evaluater a computer simulation designed to account for introepective and experimental evidgnce on the nature of mental images. He conchdes that such ima is quite real and that it provides acco to memory data not available through verbally mediated reall: Brown's concluding chapter Pursues a curious example oilutrate the com Plesity of linguistically encoded mesnoges and to Brgue the necesity of inconporaing entena of Posey wl a of thi the lncon met uses the meta language of se tory to argue that the controveis current amoug prychologse concerning competing model of eal representation, whether, fer example, Sr "standard templates” “digalcntrices, "inary feature tale,” oF “proposional a are beside the point ince “all are models ofthe same cognitive theory” (p. 279). He secs the ask of cognitive prychology ss clearly differentiated from’ that "of neurophysiclogy. Copaiive prychology isnot “concerned withthe concrete Say in which mental representation i 3 omplshed within the brain and the nervous Sypem”s rather, i “can spite only to informa. tonal equivalence between its models and ae tual mental representation inside the head” (p 270, This diancton clarifies the parallel sue in cognitive anthropology and lings between Sods ruth and hous pocar” The goal of cognitive anthropologists, Hnguiss, nd omni tive paychologins stem tenilly equivalent Each in attempting to consiract model of the human mind’t modts of the world (pp. 273. 776) in order to account forthe information procesing behavior characteristic of out Species. The tee feds differ primarily in the Iethodological context of the invegation ‘The present volume gies strong tetimony to common purpose shared by thee divert do tiptines In all, the proportion that “how humans... proces information i nota very Simple quesion” (p. 151) is now widely 3p precited, and the legacy of behavior i phaccally rected