the apparent possibility of two people sharing their color vocabulary and discriminations, although the colors one sees — one's qualia — are systematically different from the colors the other person sees.

• some people born with mutation that makes their color vision the inverse of yours, for instance

• the mental support processes outside our awareness that make our perception, memory, and thinking possible 
• the broad set of background operations that enable our experiences

unconscious mind

(according to Freud)

·      adversary to the conscious mind à constantly trying to assert itself while the conscious mind is constantly on guard against the unconscious mind’s actions

damage to the hippocampus à maintained implicit memory (separate from conscious awareness)

ability of a person with a lesion in the visual cortex to reach toward or correctly “guess” about objects in the visual field even though the person reports seeing nothing

Placebo effect experiment: how many shocks the participants could handle

·      those with placebo pill that was said to cause trembling etc. endured 4 times as many since they attributed these demonstrations of fear to the pill, rather than to the shocks; completely unaware of their thinking about the pill

·      difficulty in understanding how the mind and body influence each other – so that physical events can cause mental events and vice versa

o   Influences each other through the pineal gland

Level of alertness/sensitivity disrupted by: 

·      damage to either the thalamus or the reticular activating system in the brain stem (controls overall arousal level of the forebrain and helps control sleep and wakefulness cycle)

different brain sites

(immediate events versus past, etc.)

• cortical structures in visual system active when...
• cortical structures in forebrain active when...

• when we are consciously aware of sights in front of our eyes
• when thinking about something no longer present in our environment

   

Neural correlates of consciousness

·      specific brain states that seem to correspond to the content of someone’s conscious experience

• 2 diff. pics. (1 face; 1 house) each placed in front of 1 eye; visual system can’t handle both at once so its focus flip-flops; physical setting doesn’t change but the person’s conscious experience does
•   Brain activity in the FFA went up when participant focused on the face, and activity in the PPA went up when participant focused on house

Study – conscious sensation of free will

(Readiness potential)

o   Readiness potential: brain activity that occurs slightly before participants report any awareness of their decision to move

·      connect one area of the brain to another; communication among distinct brain areas enables coordination of separate neural processes

·      regarding the neural basis of consciousness, it proposes that workspace neurons give rise to consciousness by allowing us to link stimuli or ideas in dynamic coherent representations

·      memory that you keep ideas in while you’re working with them

When we’re asleep but not dreaming, the communication between different parts of the brain breaks down so that activities are not coordinated even though the brain is still active 

loss of consciousness associated with a breakdown of cortical connectivity and integration

Variation in the arousal level of the brain controlled by.. 

·      by a tiny cluster of 20 thousands cells in the hypothalamus

hormone that mediates the rhythm of sleep and wake

Variations in arousal level also indirectly regulated by.. 

cerebral cortex

o   Arousal in the brain in response to complex stimuli

EEG records voltage changes occurring at the surface of the scalp 

o   Pattern of regular pulses (8-12 per second) visible in the EEG of a person who is relaxed but awake and typically has her eyes closed

o   Pattern of ups and downs in the EEG is difficult to discern

"gateway" to sleep

(hypnagogic imagery)

o   Hypnagogic imagery: vivid but fleeting imagery

stage 2 of sleep

(sleep spindles, k complexes)

• several distinctive patterns in brain activity

  
  

   Sleep spindles: short bursts of rapid brain-wave activity

  
  

  K complexes: very high amplitude waves

move into delta rhythm

o   Four waves per second or fewer

delta waves dominate

o   Virtually immobile and hard to wake up

slow-wave sleep

(how long does sleeper typically spend in it?)

• a term used for both stage 3 and stage 4 sleep; slow, rolling eye movements, low cortical arousal, slowed heart rate and respiration

•  Sleeper typically spends 20 to 30 minutes in slow-wave sleep

REM 

(eye movement, sleep paralysis)

• Distinct eye move. w/ periodic bursts of jittering back and forth under closed eyelids
• Possibility of sleep paralysis – muscular paralysis of REM persists for few moments past awakening; person conscious but temporarily unable to move

REM

(shortest REM period, average # of periods per night)

•  First REM period of a night’s sleep is the shortest – after it’s complete people move back through lighter sleep stages towards deeper ones
• Average night includes 4 to 5 REM periods, gradually increasing in length and the final REM period lasting up to 45 minutes

people will try to make up lost REM sleep from the night before

o   Also visible in people who recently stopped taking medications that selectively suppress REM sleep (some commonly prescribed sleeping pills)

·      Infants average about 16 hours of sleep a day with half the time in REM sleep

·      As they age, children need __sleep and spend __ time in REM and __ time in slow-wave sleep

·      Adolescents average _ hours a night, _ in REM

·      Seniors average _ hours a night, _ in REM

• REM dreams tend to be pictorial, depicting episodes that include the dreamer as a character and seem realistic
•   Slow-wave dreams: people tend to only give sparse summaries of simply thinking about something

Freud and dreaming

(manifest versus latent content)

·      the events in the dream are merely the manifest content (direct experience) while the real meaning lies in the dream’s latent content (actual wishes and desires being symbolically expressed through the manifest content)

activation-synthesis hypothesis

(PGO involvement)

o   Activation involves PGO neural waves because it involves the pons, the geniculate, and the occipital areas

·      highly relaxed, suggestible state of mind in which a person is likely to feel that his actions and thoughts are happening to him rather than being voluntarily produced

·      when a hypnotized person is told he has returned to a younger age; simply acting like an adult believes a child would

instructing the individual to forget certain events that happened during the hypnosis (may work but can be later lifted under subsequent hypnotic instruction)

meditation: strong increase in __ rhythms associated with a state of __

: contents in the mind that stand for some object, event, or state of affairs – allows us to think about people or things when they are absent

analogical representation

(mental images)

·      an idea that shares some of the actual characteristics of the object it represents à usually take the form of mental images: resemble the objects they represent by directly reflecting the perceptual qualities of the thing represented

stands for some content without sharing any characteristics with the thing it represents

mental images and spacial layout

(map experiment)

·      the time needed for the mental speck to travel across the image was directly proportional to the distance between the two points on the original map

a statement relating a subject and a claim about that subject (i.e. “smoking is bad for your health”)

network-based models of mental representation, a “meeting place” for the various connections associated with a particular topic

network-based models of mental representations, connections between the symbols (nodes) in the network

process through which activity in one node in a network flows outward to other nodes through associative links

thinking aimed at a particular goal; the way people draw conclusions or make decisions

a strategy for making judgments quickly at the price of occasional mistakes

o   Judgment uses availability as the basis for assessing frequency

dual-process theory

(system 1, system 2)

the proposal that judgment involves two types of thinking: a fast, efficient but sometimes faulty set of strategies versus a slower, more laborious but less risky set of strategies

• System 1: fast/efficient/sometimes faulty (probabilities)
• System 2: slower/laborious/more accurate (frequencies, quantifiable evidence)

process of figuring out the implications of particular beliefs

AKA deduction

tendency to take evidence that is consistent with your beliefs more seriously than evidence inconsistent with your beliefs

logical problems containing two premises and a conclusion; it is valid if the conclusion follows logically from the premises

• Validity of conclusion depends only on the premises; doesn’t matter if the conclusion is plausible or not or if the premises happen to be true or not; all that matters is the relationship

participants shown four cards that they are told may or may not follow a simple rule; their task is to decipher which cards to turn over to determine whether the cards follow the rule

• performance better in real-world social context, rather than abstract one

conception of decision-making endorsed by many economists

• You should first always consider the possible outcomes of a decision and choose the most desirable one
• You should consider the risks

the way a decision is phrased or the way options are described seemingly peripheral aspects of the framing can influence decisions by changing the point of reference

·      strong tendency to regard losses as considerably more important than gains of comparable magnitude – and with this tendency to take steps (including risky steps) to avoid possible loss

predicting one’s emotional response to upcoming events

•  People often not correct in predicting the magnitude of their future positivity or negativity

Problem of having too many options (too many choices or too much flexibility): 

sometimes make no decision at all or end up less satisfied with our selection    

·      in decision-making, seeking a satisfactory option rather than spending more time and effort to find and select the ideal option

·      often effective problem-solving strategy in which you continually evaluate the difference between your current state and your goal, and consider how to use your resources to reduce the difference

specific procedures for solving familiar, well-defined problems

• a  series of smaller steps can then be assembled into a larger-scale solution to the initial problem

automacity

(Stroop effect)

·      ability to do a task without paying attention to it

• Stroop effect:  many steps of reading have become automatic; good however there are disadvantages (test with words like red written in blue)

   

the perspective that a person takes and the assumptions he makes in approaching a problem

·      you can often solve a problem by recalling some previous similar problem and applying its solution to your current problem

• useful as a form of instruction when solving problems

a reorganization of a problem that can facilitate its solution, a characteristic of creative thought

phoneme

(how many in English?)

·      the smallest significant unit of sound in a language; alphabetic characters roughly correspond to phonemes (e.g. apt, tap, pat all made up of same phonemes)

about 40 in English

Speech can be understood at rates of up to about __ words per minute (normal rate more like __) 

smallest significant unit of meaning in a word (e.g. the word boys has two morphemes – boy and s)

• content and function morphemes rely on different brain circuits in different parts of the brain

• a morpheme that carries the main semantic and referential content of a sentence (in English they are usually nouns, verbs, adjectives, or adverbs)

•  while adding content such as time, mode, individuation, and evidentiality, it also serves a grammatical purpose (e.g. the suffixes -s or -er or the connecting words and or if)

regular principles governing how words can be assembled into sentences

geometric representation of the structure of a sentence; descending branches represent relationships among categories

·      a tree diagram or labeled bracketing that shows the hierarchical structure of a sentence

mental representations of word meanings consist of a necessary and sufficient set of semantic features

·      a basic semantic category/concept that cannot be decomposed into smaller or less inclusive categories; all sensory-perceptual

·      concepts or word meanings are formed around average or typical values

an overlapping set of semantic features shared by members of a category, such that no members of the category to have all of the features but all members have at least one of them

the typical/most familiar example of a category (mental average of all the examples we’ve encountered)

noun phrase immediately descending from the root of the sentence tree; usually plays the semantic role of actor or agent of the action

·      verb phrase immediately descending from the root of the sentence tree; usually expresses action or state of the agent or actor

·      a predicate-argument structure; the verb is the predicated act or state and the noun phrases are its arguments, playing various semantic roles

·      the part that each phrase plays in the “who did what to whom” drama

·      word or affix that indicates the semantic role played by some noun phrase in a sentence

·      a premature, false syntactic analysis of a sentence as it is being heard or read, which must be mentally revised when later information within the sentence falsifies the initial interpretation (e.g. put the ball on the floor into the box)

·      Infants mentally register __ with unusual frequency

a concept at some accessible, middling degree of abstractness or inclusiveness (e.g. spoon, dog)

concepts that are more abstract or inclusive than basic-level concepts (e.g. animal, utensil)

·      concepts that are less abstract or more particular than basic-level concepts (e.g. poodle, soup spoon)

·      pre-linguistic infant who is exposed to two or more languages in the home environment

• better at switching between tasks

any of a number of linguistic disorders caused by injury to or malformation of the brain

Specific Language Impairment (SLI)

·      the course of development of a first language is usually protracted despite otherwise normally developing cognitive functions

·      early period during development when one is particularly responsive to environmental stimulation; same influences have less impact outside of this period

·      In learning a second language, the older the people are when they first become immersed...

·      proposal that the language one speaks determines or heavily influences the thoughts one can think or the salience of different categories of thought

zygote

(produces a blastocyst)

the fertilized egg formed by the union of the sperm and egg

(produces a blastocyst - mass of identical cells)

embryonic stage

(3 cell types)

weeks 3-8 of prenatal development

• Process of differentiation occurs among the cells 
•  Mass of cells now called the embryo
• 3 cells types: 1 for nervous system and outer skin, 1 for skeletal system and voluntary muscles, 1 to form gut and digestive organs)

the tubular structure formed early in the embryonic stage from which the central nervous system develops

o   Develops brain stem/spinal chord, midbrain, and forebrain

the prenatal period from the ninth week until birth (begins after 2 months of conception)

• Mass of cells now called the fetus; heart has begun to beat
•  Capable of simple behaviors like sucking its lips
• Mothers read Dr. Seuss while pregnant - infants adjusted sucking pattern to listen to story they were exposed to

its cellular neighbors that form its physical environment

(evidence from salamander embryos)

• purpose of glia
• how does cortex develop?

• Guides newly created neurons to migrate towards their appropriate positions
• cortex develops from the inside out, with layers closer to the surface established later than deeper layers

•  

environmental factors that can disrupt healthy neural development

• lead, alcohol, cigarette smoke, etc.

·      a developmental disorders affecting children whose mothers consumed alcohol during pregnancy; effects include a range of psychological problems and physical abnormalities

sensorimotor, cognitive, socioemotional

Rate of neural connection formation/destruction estimated to be 

·      Brain growth comes in spurts that leave the brain up to __ heavier than it was before the spurt

an infant reflex that occurs when palm is touched

·      the sucking elicited by stroking applied on or around the lips; aids breast-feeding

infant sucks on whatever is placed in his mouth

• Underestimated intellectual capacities of infants
• Regarding A-not-B effect, they may know the object still exists but they struggle to override the priming effect of reaching towards a certain cloth

1. sensorimotor period
2. preoperational period
3. concrete operational period
4. concrete operational period

sensorimotor period

object permanence

(sensorimotor period)

• infacts lack this:conviction that an object exists even when it is out of sight – Piaget believed infants don’t develop it until at least 8 months old

   

• toy experiment:  delighted by new toy but showed little concern if it disappeared from view

A-not-B effect

(sensorimotor period)

• As infants get older, they manage to search for toy if covered by cloth; but if experimenter consistently puts toy under left cloth then switches to right cloth, baby will still look under left cloth even though he/she saw the experimenter put it under the right 
•  Piaget argued that infant still doesn’t understand that an object’s existence is independent of his/her own actions

•  

o   ways of interacting with the world and later with ideas about the world

process of interpreting the environment in terms of the schemas he already has

o   process of changing his schemas based on interactions with the environment

2-7 years old; a child can think representationally but can’t yet relate these representations to each other or take a point of view other than her own

• apparent failure to conserve quantity; experiment with water in glasses when child thinks one becomes more full than another when switching to a taller glass etc
• ends when child learns how to interrelate their mental representations

7-12

child begins to understand abstract ideas such as number and substance, but only as they apply to real, concrete events

·      method for studying infant perception; after some exposure to a stimulus, an infant becomes habituated and stops paying attention to it; if the infant shows renewed interest when a new stimulus is presented, this reveals that the infant regards the new stimulus as different from the old one

• theory of mind

the set of interrelated concepts we use to make sense of our own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, as well as those of others

• preferences, intentions, beliefs

·      a process of using others’ facial expressions as a cue about the situation

bond between child and caregiver that some consider the basis for relationships later in life

·      monkeys preferred soft mother rather than wire one that provided nutrition

secure base

Bowlby argued comfort, not nutrition, is key for human attachment

• adult provide secure base for the child - relationship in which the child feels safe and protected

·      the learned attachment that is formed at a particular early period

• ducklings attached to whoever/whatever they follow

·      an experimental procedure for assessing attachment – the child is allowed to explore an unfamiliar room with the mother present before the mother leaves for a few minutes before returning

securely attached

(strange situation)

o   shows minor distress when mom leaves and greets her back with enthusiasm

anxious/resistant

(strange situation)

barely explores at all and gets upset when she leaves and cries to be picked up when she’s back

set of beliefs/expectations about how people behave in social relationships, and also guidelines for interpreting others’ actions and habitual responses to make in social settings

range of accomplishments that are beyond what the child can do on her own, but that she can achieve with help or guidance

• Authoritarian parents: high demanding, low responsiveness
•  Permissive parents: low demanding, high responsiveness
• Authoritative parents: high on both demandingness and responsiveness
• Disengaged parents: low on both

·      social status of children who are not liked by their peers and become aggressive as a result

·      social status of children who are not liked by peers and become anxious as a result

preconventional reasoning

(Kohlberg and moral thinking)

first and second stages of moral reasoning – focused on getting rewards and avoiding punishments

conventional reasoning

(Kohlberg and moral thinking)

third and fourth stages – focused on social relationships, conventions, and duties

postconventional reasoning

(Kohlberg and moral thinking)

o   fifth and sixth stages – focused on ideals and broad moral principles

period of physical and sexual maturation in which the child’s body begins to develop into its adult form

bodily structures directly related to reproduction

bodily structures that change with sexual maturity but are not directly related to reproduction

·      gradual myelination of frontal lobes – essential for self-regulation

·      according to Piaget, the stage of thinking in which they seem to apply a variety of mental operations only to relations between concrete events

period from about 12+ in which a child can think abstractly and consider hypothetical possibilities, according to Piaget

·      according to Erikson, the major developmental task of adolescence is developing a stable ego identity, or sense of who one is – failure results in developing a negative identity or in role confusion

feeling of being at home in one’s body, a sense of knowing where one is going, and an inner assuredness of anticipated recognition from those who count

·      ability to deal with new and unusual problems

a person's accumulated knowledge

• remains relatively stable across life span and can even grow as individuals gain experience

degenerative brain disorder of memory loss followed by increasing disorientation and culminating in physical and mental helplessness

intimacy versus isolation (Erikson)

(20s-early 40s)

·      major developmental task of early adulthood is developing an intimate relationship; failure to do so may lead to isolation

generativity versus stagnation

(40s-60s)

·      finding meaning in one’s work; produces sense of generativity; failure may lead to sense of stagnation

·      adults reappraise what they have done with their lives and may reevaluate their marriage or career; may occur earlier in women than men

• emotional  crises do not appear to be particularly more likely in the 40s than in other life spans

finding meaning in the life that one has led; success gives rise to a sense of integrity whereas failure leads to despair

• positive feelings actually are greater in older age

• due to shrinking time horizon, older adults increasingly value emotional goals (feeling good rather than bad) over informational goals (learning new things)
• maintained or even increased levels of positive emotion

opposite of cognitive control

an organism reacts to a cue in the environment immediately, without being able to actively choose if and when to react (moth flying to light)

experiment of thinking of common versus novel uses for objects

(what part of brain for both)

• common uses: left prefrontal cortex (language; deals with naming what you see)
• novel uses: occipital lobe - left fusiform gyus (visual center b/c you focus on visual aspects to think of something creative)

Describe the resulting behavior in subjects when Professor Thompson-Schill used TMS to stimulate prefrontal cortices during the uncommon use for objects task (Advantage of late developing prefrontal cortex?)

by turning off the prefrontal cortex and thus turning

off cognitive control, the subjects performed faster on the task --> less cognitive control as child could cause more creativity

we can die from choking on food -- but we can also make a very wide range of speech sounds

-Mere exposure, even in great quantities, does not necessarily lead to substantial declarative knowledge that would allow us to remember seemingly obvious facts

-when people are paying close attention, even one exposure is sufficient to recognize, non-obvious information

What is the difference between recall and recognition? Would you rather take a recall-based or recognition-based midterm?

• recall: coming up with info. about a memory when given a cue about it
• recognition: just identifying something as familiar
• recognition = easier

• repeated tasks (i.e. keeping fingertip on disk) enlarges cortical part of brain related to it
• MRI showed that posterior parietal cortex and hippocampus grew while medical students studied for exam

significantly larger posterior hippocampus

(memory/direction)

spacing out your studying over time. One reason this is helpful is because memory is tied to context; helpful to learn separate chunks of information on separate days because the unique cues from thosedays will be an extra help when time to recall the info

idea that there is a correlation between IQ and success, but only to an extent (after 120 not much diff.)

• proven false by testing and comparing 13 year old testing

"pruning" in brain development

(changes with age)

process of losing neurons not retained

• fetus/infant produce way more neurons than needed when adult; max neurons in prefrontal lobe at 12 months - 6 yrs
• pruning begins in teens; humans only keep about 65%

children fail during preoperational stage

• water changing in container task

• constructivism:the idea that throughout life, we systematize our knowledge and learn to interpret phenomenon according to our structures of kowledge
• Children inherently motivated to learn
• observe children's behavior to understand learning; results largely generalizable

Domain-general stages: children are in a

certain stage regardless of the domain being considered

• children can succeed at same operation if tested differently

theory of mind

(do children have it?)

• interrelated concepts we make sense of our own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, as well as those of others. For example, having the idea that other people have (diff) thoughts in their heads
• children somewhat; true or false can vary with pers.

Explain the logic of twin designs: why does the distinction between monozygotic and dizygotic twins help understand heritability?

• monozygotic: 100% same DNA; dizygotic: 50%

• helps researchers tell how much of the variation in a trait can be accounted for by genetic factors.

underdeveloped prefrontal cortex (cognitive control)

increased density of dopamine (sensation seeking)

human language - digital (infinite use of finite)

• bees - analog  based on movement and direction
• dogs - gradient (based on volume/intensity of sound)

How does the light-dark cycle affect the release of melatonin and cortisol and how do these hormones affect sleeping and waking behavior?

melanopsin receptor in eye's retinal ganglion cell layer

--> light --> neural impulses --> biological clock (SCN)

• neural impulses from light signal day's arrival
• melanopsin receptors esp. receptive to blue light

• nativist (Chomsky) position: we have innate learning capabilities that cause biases in certain domains 
• empiricist: we only have general learning mechanisms that apply across all domains; lang. developed through observations and shared experiences

1. quantity: be as informative as necessary (no more, no less)
2. quality: tell the truth
3. relevance: be relevant
4. manner: be clear, brief, unambiguous

 What is one problematic assumption of twin studies and what are the arguments for and against accepting the estimates that result from these studies?

assumption that the major differences between MZ and DZ twins result from genetic factors, since the extent to which twins share environments is the same for MZ and DZ twins

BUT people respond to MZ pair more similarly - closer environment

• MZ shared treatment prob has more to do with their shared genetics rather than other people's perception of their
  similarity

Suppose that a trait is considered 80% heritable, according to behavioral genetics research. If your parents have that trait, does this mean you are 80% likely to have it too?

No, it doesn't mean that. Heritability is not an estimate of individual risk. It is a population estimate and does not give us information about the individual risk for particular disorders/traits

He viewed attachment as also providing to the child the model that he or she will use in viewing all social relationships

gene x environment interaction

(give example)

• implies that the effects of some aspect of the environment will vary based on genetic differences among people

• long form of gene for the serotonin transporter is more efficient than the short form - seratonin transporter enables seratonin reuptake - small gene more susceptible to depression

• parents create a home environment that is partly determined by the parents’ genetics. And of course parents pass on their genes to their children
• aggressive parents = physical discipline
• physical discipline and aggressive behavior might be genetically linked

occurs when an individual’s (heritable) behavior evokes a response from the environment

children who are aggressive are those who elicit harsh physical discipline leading to an association between physical discipline and aggressive behavior

occurs when individuals seek out environments that are congruent with their genetic predispositions

children who are aggressive may seek out aggressive peers leading to an association between peer group membership and aggressive behavior

“discordant monozygotic twin design”

examines MZ twins who have had diff. experiences

• if they have diff outcomes, diff experiences likely caused (not caused by fam envir. or genetics since they share both)
• E.g. - bullying only one - that one more anxious/depressed

How are adoption studies useful in understanding heritability?

Cognitive capacities

(those that decline with age VS those that remain stable)

Decline: Working memory, episodic memory, and fluid intelligence

Stable: implicit memory, semantic memory, and crystallized intelligence

Approximately when in the course of development do children lose the ability to make phonemic distinctions that are not used in their language (e.g., l versus r in Japanese, or e versus E in Spanish)? How do we know this?

• by 6-12 months

• infants of diff ages repeatedly presented w/ 1 phoneme until they habituate to it; then presented w/ a diff one that their native lang. treats as same; Very young infants dishabituate when new phoneme is presented -> they perceive it as different from prior stimuli; but older (6-12 months) do not dishabituate - perceive new phoneme to be same as prior one

maturational

(1 of 5 theories why learning 2nd language is so hard for adults)

due to biological changes (i.e. songbird learning); adult brain not equipped for learning like children

Weakness of theory: not really answer - just restating problem

motivational 

(1 of 5 theories why learning 2nd lang so hard for adults)

not as motivated as kids to learn language

weakness? children don't have immediate need for language whereas immigrant adult def does

interference

(1 of 5 theories why learning 2nd language so hard for adult)

native language interferes with the learning of the new language

experiential

(1 of 5 theories why learning 2nd lang is so hard for adults)

the learning environment of children is more conducive to learning language and that if we could just structure the learning environment of adults to resemble it, they would learn languages more easily

Cognitive, aka Newport's "less is more" hypothesis

(1 of 5 theories why learning 2nd language is so hard for adults)

adults are able to remember too many details, and so do not see patterns as easily as children; we notice too much "Raw data"

Explain what it means for "whale" to be a member of the category "animals," according to each of the following theories of categorization: 

classical, family resemblance, and theory-dependent

• classical: they have all necessary features to be animal (eyes, self-directed movement etc.); also have at least some sufficient features (i.e. fins - not all animals have fins, but all things with fins are animals)
• Fam resemblance: have many prototypical features, but whales need not possess ALL of the features that we associate with animals
• theory-dep: Our concept of "animal" driven by our theories of biology (they have animal DNA as opposed to plant DNA, they reproduce sexually, etc)