The cognitive process of creating mental categories by identifying shared features across experiences and organizing them into coherent, meaningful groups.
Neural: temporal cortex, prefrontal cortex, hippocampal–cortical networks
Cognitive: feature clustering, rule extraction, category boundary formation
Behavioral: grouping objects or events, applying category labels, inferring properties of new instances
A child learns the concept of “bird” by noticing shared features—wings, feathers, ability to fly—across many different species, even though not all birds fly.
Exemplars → Feature Extraction → Pattern Clustering → Category Formation