cognitive psychology Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and reasoning. Cognitive psychology originated in the 1960s in a break from behaviorism, which ...

, a basic category is a category at a particular level of the category inclusion hierarchy (i.e., a particular level of

generality Generality may be: *The assumption of Generality, a concept in psychology A generality or generalty is a word used during the Ancien Régime in France and other Western European countries to indicate a specific territory under direct rule of centr ...

) that is preferred by humans in learning and memory tasks. The term is associated with the work of

psychologist A psychologist is a professional who practices psychology and studies mental states, perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and social processes and behavior. Their work often involves the experimentation, observation, and interpretation of how indi ...

Eleanor Rosch, who demonstrated basic category preferences in a number of classic

experiment An experiment is a procedure carried out to support or refute a hypothesis, or determine the efficacy or likelihood of something previously untried. Experiments provide insight into Causality, cause-and-effect by demonstrating what outcome oc ...

Mathematics

In 2016, Tom Leinster published the "Basic Category Theory", which seeks universal properties that govern in

mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

. Accessed 5 February 2018.

References

Cognition {{cognitive-psych-stub