From Prototypes to Exemplars: Representational Shifts in a Probability Judgment Task

What information is used to make subjective probability judgments? In this study we test a hypothesis, grounded both in research on categorization and developmental psychology, proposing that when first confronted with an environment people create prototypes and as a function of learning they start to store concrete exemplars. The hypothesis implies that this representational shift will appear later in an environment with more complex stimuli. Therefore the hypothesis was tested with both a standard stimulus sample and a complex stimulus sample. The results indicates that more people rely on prototypes at an early stage in learning than later on, and that the shift towards more widespread exemplar memory reliance appears later in an environment with more complex