Eleanor Rosch

Eleanor Rosch (once known as Eleanor Rosch Heider [See footnote at Rosch, E.H., "Natural Categories", Cognitive Psychology, Vol.4, No.3, (May 1973), p.328.] ) is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, specializing in cognitive psychology and primarily known for her work on categorization. She also created prototype theory in linguistics. Her work has been influential on her Berkeley colleague George Lakoff and her coauthor the philosophical biologist Francisco Varela. Her more recent work in the psychology of religion has sought to show the implications of Buddhism and contemplative aspects of Western religions for modern psychology.

From field experiments she conducted in the 1970s with the Dani people of Papua New Guinea, Rosch 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. Although the Dani lacked words for colors other than black and white, 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.

Publications

Books

*1991 (with Francisco Varela and Evan F. Thompson). "The Embodied Mind". MIT 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
*1981 (with C. Mervis), "Categorization of Natural Objects," "Annual Review of Psychology 32": 89-113.
*1978 (with Lloyd, B., eds). "Cognition and Categorization". Hillsdale NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
*1977, "Human Categorization" in Warren, Neil, ed., "Advances in Cross-Cultural Psychology 1": 1-72. Academic Press.
*1975, "Cognitive representation of semantic categories," "Journal of Experimental Psychology 104": 573-605.
*1973, "Natural categories," "Cognitive Psychology 4": 328-50.

Book chapters

*Rosch, E.H. (1974) Linguistic relativity. In: E. Silverstein (ed.) Human Communication: Theoretical Perspectives, Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Papers

*Rosch, E.H. (1973) Natural categories, "Cognitive Psychology" 4: 328-50.
*Rosch, R.H. (1975) Cognitive reference points, "Cognitive Psychology" 7: 532-47.
*Rosch, E.H., Mervis, C.B., Gray, W.D., Johnson, D.M. and Boyes-Braem, P. (1976) Basic objects in natural categories, "Cognitive Psychology" 8: 382-439.

Notes

ee also

*Cognitive science
*Embodied mind
*Linguistics
*Psychology
*Interobject

External links

* [http://psychology.berkeley.edu/faculty/profiles/erosch.html Faculty page for Eleanor Rosch] at the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley
* [http://www.sis.pitt.edu/~mbsclass/hall_of_fame/rosch.html Eleanor Rosch's web page on Pitt's Information Science Hall of Fame]
* [http://www.dialogonleadership.org/Rosch-1999.html 1999 interview on her past and current research]

Persondata
NAME=Rosch, Eleanor
ALTERNATIVE NAMES=
SHORT DESCRIPTION=Professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley
DATE OF BIRTH=
PLACE OF BIRTH=
DATE OF DEATH=
PLACE OF DEATH=