Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Thesis Format

Monograph

Degree

Master of Science

Program

Psychology

Supervisor

Dr. John Paul Minda

Abstract

The present study explored whether people share a common understanding of different settlement concepts despite individual variation. Participants completed a property listing task where they were asked to generate features for 57 settlement concepts. Hierarchical cluster analysis identified distinct clusters based on shared features. Central tendencies extracted from clusters at different levels of abstraction revealed featural prototypes and an overall family resemblance structure. To probe the effects of regional context on conceptual structure, subsequent cluster analyses used a subset of participants who were long-term residents of Canada or the United States. Prototypical features varied regionally, suggesting an effect of geographical region on conceptual structure. However, the results should be interpreted cautiously, as more data are needed to understand such differences in representation. Findings centralize the utility of semantic feature norms in understanding how people collectively think about where they live, and the importance of context effects on representations of settlements.

Summary for Lay Audience

Most people know what a city is, but when asked to describe a city, there are likely differences in the features that people name. For instance, one individual who primarily takes the subway might say a city has public transportation, but an individual who commutes by car might focus on traffic and parking. Despite these differences, these two individuals are not confused when they talk together about cities. Are these two individuals really talking about the same thing; is there a universal city concept that is shared across North American English speakers? To better understand overall similarities in how people think about settlements, participants (N = 122) were asked to generate features for 57 types of settlement concepts. A clustering method that groups similar items was applied to the features participants generated, revealing several distinct groupings of concepts. The clustering approach helped show the similarities among the groupings and the typical features of settlement concepts that grouped together. As an extension, the data were split by region to compare the features generated by long-term residents of Canada with features generated by long-term residents of the United States. Canadians and Americans tend to speak the same language, and because the two countries are geographically close, they generally have similar linguistic labels for settlement concepts. However, the Canadian and American environments are different, and as such, the features generated by Canadians and Americans for these settlement concepts should differ, too. My results showed distinct clusters for Canadians and Americans, supporting my prediction that people from different regions would generate different features for the same concepts. However, more information is needed to fully grasp these regional differences. This empirical description of human settlement concepts helps clarify how people collectively think about and understand the built environment and how such representations can change depending on where they live.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

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