Prototypical concept formation : an alternative approach to knowledge representation

Abstract

This paper describes an approach for representing and forming natural categories. We will first show classical concept formation to be inadequate and discuss experimental results of cognitive science which led to the development of prototype theory. The basic idea is to represent concepts by their most typical members instead of giving a precise definition. The core of prototype theory, as validated results, points out only properties of human concept formation, but does not imply a concrete model. Thus, we will introduce our approach to prototypical concept formation and discuss its implementation.