Cognitive Anthropology Glossary

The level of categorization that is most cognitively natural and informative, such as 'dog' rather than 'animal' or 'poodle.' Identified by Eleanor Rosch.

A subfield of cultural anthropology that studies the relationship between culture and human cognition, focusing on shared knowledge systems and classification.

The position that fundamental cognitive categories and processes vary across cultures due to differences in language, experience, and socialization.

The position that basic cognitive processes and categories are shared across all human cultures due to shared biology.

A method for analyzing the meaning of terms in a semantic domain by identifying their minimal distinctive features.

A computational approach modeling cognition through networks of simple units, applied in cognitive anthropology to explain cultural knowledge acquisition.

A statistical method for determining the degree to which members of a group share cultural knowledge about a domain.

The degree to which an individual's knowledge matches the shared cultural knowledge of their group, as measured by consensus analysis.

A shared, presupposed cognitive schema that organizes understanding of a particular domain of experience within a culture.

The process by which cultural knowledge is passed across generations through language, socialization, and practice.

The theory that cognitive processes are spread across individuals, artifacts, and environments rather than confined to a single mind.

A structured method for drawing out cultural knowledge from informants, such as free listing, pile sorting, or triad testing.

An insider's perspective that uses categories and distinctions meaningful to members of the culture being studied.

The study of how different cultures understand and classify their natural environment, including plants, animals, soils, and landscapes.

An approach that seeks to describe a culture's knowledge system using its own categories and classification schemes.

An outsider's analytical perspective that uses categories applicable across cultures for comparative purposes.

A culturally specific hierarchical system of classification used by ordinary people to organize a domain of knowledge.

An elicitation method in which informants list all items they can think of in a domain, revealing salience and cognitive organization.

The hypothesis that the language one speaks influences how one thinks about and perceives the world.

A technique where informants group items based on perceived similarity to reveal the structure of cultural knowledge.

The best or most typical example of a category, around which the category is cognitively organized.

The degree to which an item is prominent or cognitively accessible within a cultural domain.

An abstract mental framework that represents typical patterns of objects, events, or situations and facilitates processing of new information.

A bounded area of culturally relevant knowledge, such as kinship, color, plants, or disease.

A level in a hierarchical classification system, such as life form, generic, specific, or varietal in folk biology.