Tasemes

Tasemes are a term used in some interdisciplinary contexts to denote the smallest units that comprise a system's representation or state. Because the term has not been standardized, its exact meaning varies by field.

The coinage of taseme is recent and there is no single etymology; in practice, tasemes are described as elemental, combinable units that can be discrete or continuous, and that serve as building blocks for more complex structures.

In cognitive science and perception, tasemes may correspond to elemental perceptual features that, when combined, encode objects or scenes. In machine learning and information representation, tasemes are often conceived as latent factors, features, or components extracted by models such as factor analyses, topic models, or neural representations. In social science or anthropology, tasemes can denote observable units of behavior or social action that are used to characterize patterns.

Because there is no universal definition, tasemes are mainly used as a placeholder concept in discussions of representation, modularity, and compositionality. They help analysts discuss the granularity of data descriptions without committing to a specific formalism.

See also: feature, latent variable, unit, component, representation.