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Updated: Jun 16, 2026

The (Spatial) Memory Game: Testing the Relationship Between Spatial Language, Object Knowledge, and Spatial Cognition
Published on: February 19, 2018
Ways of probing situated concepts
Ana Sofia Morais1, Henrik Olsson, Lael J Schooler
1Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Lentzeallee 94, Berlin, Germany. morais@mpib-berlin.mpg.de
Abstract:
Two ways of eliciting conceptual content have been to instruct participants to list the intrinsic properties that concept exemplars possess or to report any thoughts that come to mind about the concept. It has been argued that the open, unconstrained probe is better able to elicit the situational information that concepts contain. We evaluated this proposal in two experiments comparing the two probes with regard to the content that they yield for object concepts at the superordinate and basic levels. The results showed that the open probe was better able to elicit situated conceptual knowledge and point out differences in the representations of superordinate and basic concepts.
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