Abstract
The purpose of this study was to investigate hierarchical structure of concepts which was the basic organization of human knowledge. In order to compare two different types of hierarchy (concrete-abstract hierarchy and part-whole hierarchy), 40 subjects were asked to list kinds of 12 concepts and the other 40 subjects were asked to list parts of those. The concepts were divided into biological categories, object categories and scene categories. Results revealed that while more kinds were listed for the biological categories, more parts were listed for the scene categories. The conclusion was that concepts were organized into the two types of hierarchy, and that the two structures were different in salience among the categories. It was suggested that the difference was due to the relationship between superordinate- and subordinate-concepts and to the internal structures among subordinate-concepts.
