ch9- conceptual knowledge Flashcards
prototype approach to categorization
membership ina category is determined by comparing object to a prototype that represents that category
what does it mean to have high typicality?
a category member closely resembles the category prototype
typicality effect
ability to judge highly prototypical objects more rapidly
rosch’s priming experiment
primed w a verbal cue of a color and measured participants response times to which color pairs matches… priming of that color gave participants highly prototypical example and resulted in quicker response times
exemplar approach
determining whether an object is similar to other objects, but involves many examples
Which approach best explains the typicality effect?
exemplar approach
which level of hierarchical organization is “special”?
the basic level because it results in the most useful knowledge/info
semantic network approach
proposes that concepts are arranged in networks
collins and quillians hierarchical model
a network of nodes that are connected by links by shared characteristics of categories
cognitive economy
storing shared properties just once at higher level nodes rather than multiple times for lower level nodes
spreading activation
activity spread out along any link that is connected to an activated node
connectionist approach
McClellard & Rumelhart -proposes that concepts are represented by activity that is distributed across a network
connection weight
determines how signals sent from one unit either increase or decrease the activity of the next unit - corresponds to synaptic transmission
high connection weight = strong tendency to excite next unit
how is a concept represented in a connectionist approach?
by the pattern of activity in all of the units in the network
what needs to happen for a network to work properly?
connection weights need to be adjusted to only activate relevant unites (learning process)
back propogation
when the learning process occurs and the erroneous responses in the property unit cause an error signal to be sent back thru the network
connectionist networks
created by a learning process that shapes the networks so information about each concept is contained in the distributed pattern of activity across a number of units
category specific memory impairment
lost ability to identify one type of object but retained ability
multiple factor approach
idea of distributed representation that lead researchers to search for factors beyond sensory and functional
semantic category approach
proposes that there are specific neural circuits in the brain for some specific categories
category map
focused on brain areas that are specialized to response to specific types of stimuli and emphasize the brain response to items from a particular category distributed over a number of cortical areas
embodied approach
states that our knowledge of concepts is based on reactivation of sensory and motor responses that occur when we interact with the object
