exemplars and prototypes

[Brian MacWhinney]

I agree with David and George's comments.  I particularly agree with
George's observation that psychologists have failed to introduce the needed
additional terminology to deal with the different logical possibilities.
Of course categorization people like Hintzman, Kruschke, Nosofsky, and
maybe even Barsalou might argue that one doesn't know that an exemplar is a
paragon during early acquisition, and that it only becomes a paragon after
the pool of exemplars is given prototype structure.  But all these further
distinctions nicely facilitate thinking and theory, as George is saying.
One distinction that may help David a bit is the contrast between the
abstract prototype (the statistical mean of the features) and an
instantiated prototype (perhaps something like George's paragon -- i.e. the
robin as an "ideal" bird).

--Brian MacWhinney