Judging the likelihood that things fall into a certain category on the basis of how well they seem to match a particular prototype refers to the use of the:

a. framing effect
b. belief perseverance phenomenon
c. availability heuristic
d. representativeness heuristic

The answer is D. Representativeness heuristic.

Explanation:

Representativeness heuristic was established by psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman in the 1970s to refer to how an event's degree is similar concerning important characteristics to its parent population, as well as it reflects the aspects of the process through which it is produced.

Heuristics are important because they usually utilize effort-reduction as well as a simplification in the process related to decision-making. The representativeness heuristic can be defined as to assess the similarity between objects, as well as to organize them according to the category prototype.