Eleanor Rosch (once known as Eleanor Rosch Heider;
["Natural Categories", Cognitive Psychology, Vol. 4, No. 3, (May 1973), p. 328.] born 1938) is an American
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 ...
. She is a
professor
Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...
of psychology at the
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
, specializing in
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 ...
and primarily known for her work on
categorization
Categorization is the ability and activity of recognizing shared features or similarities between the elements of the experience of the world (such as Object (philosophy), objects, events, or ideas), organizing and classifying experience by a ...
, in particular her
prototype
A prototype is an early sample, model, or release of a product built to test a concept or process. It is a term used in a variety of contexts, including semantics, design, electronics, and Software prototyping, software programming. A prototyp ...
theory, which has profoundly influenced the field of
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 ...
.
Throughout her work Rosch has conducted extensive research focusing on a range of topics, including semantic categorization,
mental representation
A mental representation (or cognitive representation), in philosophy of mind, cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and cognitive science, is a hypothetical internal cognitive symbol that represents external reality, or else a mental process that ma ...
of
concept
Concepts are defined as abstract ideas. They are understood to be the fundamental building blocks of the concept behind principles, thoughts and beliefs.
They play an important role in all aspects of cognition. As such, concepts are studied by s ...
s, and
linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...
. Her research interests include cognition, concepts, causality, thinking, memory, and cross-cultural, and Eastern and religious psychology. Her more recent work in the psychology of religion has sought to show the implications of
Buddhism
Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and gra ...
and contemplative aspects of Western religions for modern psychology.
Early life and education
Rosch was born in New York City, the daughter of an English teacher from England and a mother who was a Russian refugee. She completed an undergraduate philosophy thesis at
Reed College
Reed College is a private liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon. Founded in 1908, Reed is a residential college with a campus in the Eastmoreland neighborhood, with Tudor-Gothic style architecture, and a forested canyon nature preserve at ...
on
Wittgenstein
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( ; ; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrians, Austrian-British people, British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy o ...
, who she said "cured her of studying philosophy."
After school, she served as a social worker in Portland for several years, returning later to Harvard to study clinical psychology at the then-Department of Social Relations. Rosch delivered a paradigm-changing doctoral thesis at
Harvard
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
about category formation, under the direction of Roger Brown. After a short stint at
Brown University
Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...
and
Connecticut College
Connecticut College (Conn College or Conn) is a private liberal arts college in New London, Connecticut. It is a residential, four-year undergraduate institution with nearly all of its approximately 1,815 students living on campus. The college w ...
, Rosch joined the Department of Psychology at University of California, Berkeley in 1971.
Research
From field experiments Rosch conducted (alongside her then-husband
Karl Heider) in the 1970s with the
Dani people of
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; ho, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niu Gini), is a country i ...
, she concluded that when categorizing an everyday object or experience, people rely less on abstract definitions of categories than on a comparison of the given object or experience with what they deem to be the object or experience best representing a category ("prototype").
Although the Dani lack words for all the English colors (their language contained only two color terms dividing all colors into either the "light, bright" category or the "dark, cool" category), Rosch showed that they could still categorize objects by colors for which they had no words. She argued that basic objects have a psychological import that transcends cultural differences and shapes how such objects are mentally represented. She concluded that people in different cultures tend to categorize objects by using prototypes, although the prototypes of particular categories may vary.
Rosch contributed to multiple scholarly works of taxonomic analysis of objects based on these prototype ("chair") and subordinate terms ("tall black leather chair"). She inferred that overuse of subordinate terms could be attributed to the attitude of snobbery and elitism.
Her work has been often referenced by that of computer vision and deep learning researcher
Aude Oliva
Aude Oliva is a French professor of computer vision, neuroscience, and human-computer interaction at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).
Education
Oliva has a dual French baccalaureate in mathematics and ph ...
, who has built upon Rosch's object classifications to teach computers to recognize basic scenes instantly interpreted by humans.
Publications
Books
*1978 (with Lloyd, B., eds). ''Cognition and Categorization''. Hillsdale NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
*1991 (with
Francisco Varela
Francisco Javier Varela García (September 7, 1946 – May 28, 2001) was a Chilean biologist, philosopher, cybernetician, and neuroscientist who, together with his mentor Humberto Maturana, is best known for introducing the concept of autopoiesi ...
and Evan F. Thompson). ''The Embodied Mind''. MIT Press.
Book chapters
* 1973, "On the Internal Structure of Perceptual and Semantic Categories." In T. Moore (ed.), ''Cognitive Development and the Acquisition of Language, New York: Academic Press, 1973.
* 1974, Linguistic relativity. In: E. Silverstein (ed.) Human Communication: Theoretical Perspectives, Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
*1977, "Human Categorization" in Warren, Neil, ed., ''Advances in Cross-Cultural Psychology 1'': 1-72. Academic Press.
*1983, "Prototype classification and logical classification: The two systems" in Scholnick, E., ''New Trends in Cognitive Representation: Challenges to Piaget's Theory''. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates: 73-86
Papers
Categorization and prototype theory
*
*
*1975, "Cognitive representation of semantic categories," ''Journal of Experimental Psychology 104(3): 192-233.
*
*
Psychology of religion
*
*
*
*
Awards and recognition
Rosch is a Fellow of the Cognitive Science Society.
She has mediated several discussions with the
Dalai Lama
Dalai Lama (, ; ) is a title given by the Tibetan people to the foremost spiritual leader of the Gelug or "Yellow Hat" school of Tibetan Buddhism, the newest and most dominant of the four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism. The 14th and current Dal ...
.
See also
*
Categorization
Categorization is the ability and activity of recognizing shared features or similarities between the elements of the experience of the world (such as Object (philosophy), objects, events, or ideas), organizing and classifying experience by a ...
*
Cognitive science
*
Embodied mind
Embodied cognition is the theory that many features of cognition, whether human or otherwise, are shaped by aspects of an organism's entire body. Sensory and motor systems are seen as fundamentally integrated with cognitive processing. The cognit ...
*
Grand Valley Dani language
*
Interobject An interobject is a dream phenomenon of an object intermediate or in-between two other known objects.
Definition
The term was coined by Mark J. Blechner in his study ''The Dream Frontier''. Interobjects differ from typical dream condensations in wh ...
*
Prototype theory
Prototype theory is a theory of categorization in cognitive science, particularly in psychology and cognitive linguistics, in which there is a graded degree of belonging to a conceptual category, and some members are more central than others. It ...
References
External links
Faculty page for Eleanor Roschat the Department of Psychology at the
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
Eleanor Rosch's web page on Pitt's Information Science Hall of Fame
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rosch, Eleanor
American women psychologists
Women cognitive scientists
American cognitive psychologists
Reed College alumni
University of California, Berkeley faculty
1938 births
Living people
Harvard University alumni
Brown University faculty
American women academics
21st-century American women scientists