Professor James A Hampton

Information:
Specialism:	Psychology of Concepts and Categorization
Teaching:	BSc 3 Concepts and Categorizations, BSc 2 Research Methods and Statistics
Location:	Social Sciences Building, Room D414
Tel:	020 7040 8520
Fax:	020 7040 8580
Email:	hampton@city.ac.uk
OfficeHours:	Tues-Thurs 2-4, or email for an appointme

Specialisms

My research concerns the psychology of concepts and categorization, including the way in which people understand the world by classifying objects, people, events or situations into different conceptual types or categories, and problems arising from the vagueness of word meanings.

After studying Natural Sciences at Cambridge, I took my Phd in Psychology at University College London before moving to City in 1977. Since then I have had Visiting Appointments in the USA at Stanford, Cornell, Chicago, Yale and New York Universities. My research interests have broadly concerned the interface between psychology, philosophy and linguistics as applied to the problem of concepts and word meaning. I have championed a view of concepts known as the Prototype Model, according to which people represent concepts by concentrating on clear central examples rather than on the boundary cases between one concept and another. As a consequence the way in which we classify the world is often subject to vagueness and inconsistency. I have also published a series of studies of Conceptual Combination, in which I showed that the way in which simple logical connectives such as “and”, “or” and “not” operate in natural language is only approximately related to their operation in set logic. An explanation is provided by the proposal that when we form a complex concept such as “Bird that is also a Pet”, a process is invoked that seeks to integrate the prototype information representing each concept into a single composite.

Some recent publications

Hampton, J.A. (2010). Concepts in Human Adults. In D. Mareschal, P. Quinn and S. E. G. Lea (Eds.). The Making of Human Concepts, (pp. 293-311). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hampton, J.A. (2009). Stability in Concepts and Evaluating the Truth of Generic Statements. In F.J.Pelletier (Ed.), Kinds, Things and Stuff: Concepts of generics and mass terms. New Directions in Cognitive Science, Vol. 12, (pp. 80-99). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hampton, J.A., & Jönsson, M.C. (2009). Typicality and Compositionality: The Logic of Combining Vague Concepts. In E.Machery, W.Hinzen & M.Werning (Eds.) Handbook on Compositionality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (in press).

Hampton, J.A., Storms, G., Simmons, C.L., & Heussen, D. (2009). Feature Integration in Natural Language Concepts. Memory & Cognition, (in press)

Molesworth, C.J., Bowler, D.M., & Hampton, J.A. (2009). When prototypes aren’t best and category membership is restricted: Judgments made by children with autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 39, 589-595.

Jönsson, M.C. & Hampton, J.A. (2008) On prototypes as defaults. (Comment on Connolly, Fodor, Gleitman and Gleitman, 2007). Cognition, 106, 913-923..

Hampton, J.A. (2007). Typicality, Graded Membership and Vagueness. Cognitive Science, 31, 355-383.

Hampton, J.A, Estes, Z. & Simmons, S.G. (2007). Metamorphosis: Essence, Appearance and Behavior in the Categorization of Natural Kinds. Memory & Cognition, 35, 1785-1800.

Full listing see: www.staff.city.ac.uk/hampton/publications.htm