Published: 2017-01-11

Investigating the role of disability factor in building mental representation of compound category

Nawoja Mikołajczak-Matyja
Pedagogical Forum
Section: Topic
https://doi.org/10.21697/fp.2016.1.06

Abstract

The paper makes a contribution to the problem of integration by suggesting the possibility of including into the spectrum of research on issues related to integration psychosemantic analyses - the study of mental representations of categories related with disability. A method of analysing the structure of categories of subgroups of disabled people (which are subject to the so called “multiple oppression”) is proposed. Such type of categories should be analysed as compound categories subordinate to two or more superordinate/simple categories, and the structure of the compound category should be examined in terms of the degree of its similarity to each superordinate category. The example of psychosemantic research on the category of disabled women is presented. The unique specifics of oppression typical for this subgroup of disabled people, determining the structure of the compound category and its relations with superordinate categories (a woman and a disabled person), can be seen as the result of treating dysfunction as a factor creating a gap between disabled women and prototypical femininity by hindering the effective fulfilment of traditional female roles. The results of the presented study – test of associations and test of scales – confirm a very large difference between the narrower category of disabled woman and the more general category of woman as well as the much stronger and dominant role of the disability factor in the process of building the representation of the compound category.

Keywords:

concepts, mental representation, semantic memory, mental lexicon, disability, feminism, disabled woman, integration

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Citation rules

Mikołajczak-Matyja, N. (2017). Investigating the role of disability factor in building mental representation of compound category. Pedagogical Forum, 6(1), 81–100. https://doi.org/10.21697/fp.2016.1.06

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