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Online Psychological Glossary >> Exemplar-Based Processing, Exemplar Model
Exemplar-Based Reasoning
Exemplar-based processing is a type of reasoning based on knowledge about specific category members, rather than on more general information about the overall category.
It claims that one's concept is one's memories of individual examples of the category you have experienced.
Exemplar model is in some ways similar to prototype model.
Both models claim that you categorize something by comparing its properties or features against remembered properties - properties of the prototype, or properties of remembered category examplars.
You assign a new thing to the category which provides the most similar comparisons. Both can explain the typicality effect, the fact that you are faster to categorize things that are highly typical of their category than things that are less typical.
More typical things are more similar to the prototype, and they are also more similar to most remembered exemplars.
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