An experimental means, devised by Eleanor Rosch in the early 1970s, to investigate the prototype structure of categories. Rosch conducted a series of experiments in which subjects were asked to provide so-called 'goodness-of-example' ratings for between fifty and sixty members of each category, based on the extent to which each member was representative of the category. Typically, subjects were provided with a seven-point scale. They were asked to rate a particular member of the category along this scale, with a rating of 1 indicating that the member is highly representative, and a rating of seven indicating that the entity was not very representative.

The experiments Rosch employed in order to obtain goodness-of-example ratings were 'linguistic' experiments.

That is, subjects were presented with word lists rather than visual images. Table 6 presents a summary of some of the goodness-of-example ratings uncovered by Rosch for five categories.