Extracting Prototypes From Lexical Feature Norms for Settlement Concepts
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.