Chapter 8 Flashcards
Inference
The logical interpretations and conclusions that were never part of the original stimulus material
Semantic memory
Our organized knowledge about the world
Includes general, lexical, and conceptual knowledge
Schemas
General knowledge about an object or event
Concept
Your mental representation of a category
Situated cognition approach
We make use of information in the immediate environment or situation
Our knowledge depends on the context that surrounds us
The prototype approach
You decide whether a particular item belongs to a category by comparing this item with a prototype
Suitable when the category has numerous members
Prototype
The item that is the best, most typical example of a category
Prototypicality
The degree to which items are representative of their category
Graded structure
Begins with the most representative members, and continues on through the non-prototypical members
Typicality effect
People judge typical items faster than non typical items
Semantic priming effect
People respond faster to an item if it was preceded by an item with similar meaning
Family resemblance
No single attribute is shared by all examples of a concept; however, each example has at least 1 attribute in common with some other examples
The 3 levels of categorization
Superordinate (most general)
Basic (most common)
Subordinate (most specific)
What area of the brain is activated for superordinate vs subordinate levels of categorization?
Super: prefrontal cortex
Sub: parietal cortex and occipital cortex
Validity
A test’s ability to predict a person’s performance in another situation
The exemplar approach
We first learn information about some specific examples of a concept, then we classify each new stimulus by deciding how closely it resembles all of those specific examples
People do not need to perform any kind of abstraction process
For categories that have few members
What half of the brain stores exemplars vs prototypes?
Proto: left
Exemplars: right
Network approaches
More concerned about the interconnections among related items
Node
One unit located in the network
Spreading activation
When activation spreads from one node to another
ACT-R approact
Adaptive Control of Thought-Rational
Attempts to explain all of cognition
Propositional network
Propositional network
Pattern of interconnected propositions
Proposition
The smallest unit of knowledge that can be judged either true or false
The parallel distributed processing approach
Proposes that cognitive processes can be represented by a model in which activation flows through networks that link together a large number of simple, neuron-like units
Spontaneous generalization
Using individual cases to draw inferences about general information
Drawing a conclusion about a general category
Default assignment
Based on information from other similar people or objects
Draw a conclusion about a specific member of a category
Connection weights
Determine how much activation one unit can pass on to another unit
Graceful degradation
The brain’s ability to provide partial memory
Not all information is forgotten at once
Schema therapy
Clinician and client work together in order to explore the client’s core beliefs and create appropriate new and helpful strategies
Script
A simple, well-structured sequence of events in a specified order
Associated with a highly familiar activity
One kind of schema (schema for how things unfold in time)
It is an abstraction
Life script
A list of events that a person believes would be most important throughout his or her lifetime
Boundary extension
Our tendency to remember having viewed a greater portion of a scene than was actually shown
Even when the picture is not cropped
Abstraction
A memory process that stores the meaning of a message, rather than the exact words
False alarm
Occurs when people “remember” an item that was not originally presented
Constructive model of memory
People integrate information from individual sentences in order to construct larger ideas
The pragmatic approach
Proposes that people pay attention to the aspect of a message that is most relevant to their current goals
Gender stereotypes
The beliefs and opinions that we associate with males and females
Implicit association test
Based on the principle that people can mentally pair two related words together much more easily than they can pair two unrelated words
Category
A set of objects that belong together
Groups of information that allow us to interact with the world in a sensible way
The number of members depends on levels of categorization
How do you depict the strength between nodes?
Distance
Thickness of the line
Number of lines
