Development of Categorisation: Perceptual and Conceptual Categories

The field of infant categorisation has been bedevilled by the use of the same terms to mean different things. I hesitate to add to an already overexuberant terminology, but it is obviously crucial for us to define our terms carefully. First, there is the distinction between concept and category. I shall use the term concept to refer to a summary representation that forms the core meaning or the intension of a notion. It answers the question: what kind of thing is it? The concept of tiger consists of the sort of thing we think a tiger is. The term category, on the other hand, emphasises the extension of a concept; it answers the question: which things are tigers? The distinction is obviously only heuristic, and…