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exemplars in a recall list, communalities should be sought.
The goal should be to determine what characteristics of
exemplars predict that an item will be listed as an
exemplar. Perhaps the simplest way to do this is to have
subjects recall negative exemplars of the target semantic
category as well as positive exemplars. Then multivariate
procedures can be used to determine which exemplar
characteristics discriminate the positive exemplars from the
negative. Als, on recall tasks, factors other than
category criteria might influence the listing of exemplars.
By having subjects list both positive and negative exemplars
of the target category, the effects of such extraneous
variables could be moderated in the analysis, since they
should be relatively constant across both recall tasks.
Method
Pilot Studies
Although semantic studies using free recall can be
designed such that each subject generates criteria by which
the exemplars can be differentiated (Coltheart & Evans,
1981), there is such heterogeneity among subjects that the
results cannot be pooled or easily compared. Since the
present study sought to understand a consensus On the
meaning of a social concept rather than individual
differences, all subjects were to make judgements on the