Does rank have its privilege? Inductive inferences within folkbiological taxonomies

A comparative study of categorization via folk biological taxonomies focuses on the relation between privileged levels of biological categories & inductive inference. Experiment 1 investigated Itzaj Maya (N = 15, aged 54-80) inductive inferences to folk biological taxa of ranks. Experiment 2 investigated American (N = 30 undergraduates) inductive inferences to corresponding taxa. Experiment 3 (N = 30) examined the linguistic transparency of the inductive privilege of folk-generic categories by eliminating the nomenclature advantage of experiment 2. Experiment 4 (N = 30) attempted to show privilege of a given taxonomic level. Whereas tasks tapping knowledge in urbanized American adults does not necessarily predict privilege, in Itzaj Maya adults, presumptive basic level corresponds to the inductively privileged level; a similarity-based account fails to account for this difference. These findings suggest that in traditional cultures, knowledge & expectation converge on a single privileged level; in urban culture, however, language & expectation result in a dissociation of knowledge that leads to salient folk biological categories despite little knowledge of the natural world at this level. It is concluded that despite cross-cultural differences in knowledge about folk-generic taxa & expectations about the way the world is categorized, there are, cross-culturally, very similar patterns of conceptual organization & reasoning as a result of a fundamental categorization component process of human cognition. 9 Figures, 58 References. T. Rosenberg