Chapter 8: General Knowledge

Question 1

What is semantic memory?

Answer 1

Semantic memory refers to our organized knowledge about the world. Semantic memory includes general knowledge, lexical or language knowledge, and conceptual knowledge. An example is knowing that Ottawa is the capital of Canada.

Question 2

How are semantic memory and top-down processing related?

Answer 2

Our general knowledge about the world allows us to make inferences or predictions (top-down processing) about stimuli that are similar to those we have knowledge about. In addition, it influences most of our cognitive activities.

Question 3

Define categories.

Answer 3

A category is a set of objects that belong together. Categories tell us something useful about their members and our cognitive system considers the members to be at least partly equivalent.

Question 4

Define concepts.

Answer 4

A concept is your mental representation of a category.

Question 5

How are categories and concepts related to semantic memory?

Answer 5

Semantic memory allows you to organize the objects you encounter by grouping them into categories and mentally combining them under a single concept. This reduces the space required for storage. When you encounter new examples from a category, concepts allow you to make inferences about the object.

Question 6

What is a prototype?

Answer 6

A prototype is the item that is the best, most typical and representative example of a category.

Question 7

Explain the prototype approach.

Answer 7

Objects are compared to the prototype to decide whether a particular item belongs in the category.

Question 8

Define prototypicality.

Answer 8

Prototypicality is the degree to which members of a category are representative of their category.

Question 9

Explain graded structure.

Answer 9

All members of a category are not truly equal. They differ in their prototypicality and have a graded structure. It begins with the most representative members and goes in order of prototypicality through to the nonprototypical members.

Question 10

What are the three characteristics of prototypes that differentiate them from nonprototypes.

Answer 10

1. they are supplied as examples of a category
2. they are judged more quickly after semantic priming
3. they share attributes in a family resemblance category

Question 11

According to Rosch’s theory, what are the three levels of categorization?

Answer 11

1. superordinate
2. basic
3. subordinate

Question 12

Describe superordinate categories.

Answer 12

Superordinate-level categories are general, higher-level categories, such as animal.

Question 13

Describe basic categories.

Answer 13

Basic-level categories are moderately specific, such as dog. They are neither too general nor too specific.

Question 14

Describe subordinate categories.

Answer 14

Subordinate-level categories are more specific, lower-level categories, such as golden retriever.

Question 15

What are the special characteristics of basic-level categories?

Answer 15

1. people prefer to use them to name categories
2. people perform better on semantic priming tasks when the prime is basic-level
3. different levels of categorization activate different brain regions

Question 16

Describe the exemplar approach.

Answer 16

We first learn information about some specific examples of a concept and then we classify new objects by deciding how closely it resembles the specific examples. Each example is called an exemplar and is stored in memory.

Question 17

How are the prototype and exemplar approaches similar?

Answer 17

1. decisions about category membership are made by comparing a new item against some stored representation of the category
2. make similar predictions about semantic memory

Question 18

How are the prototype and exemplar approaches different?

Answer 18

1. with the prototype approach your stored representation is an idealized representation whereas with the exemplar approach your stored representation is a collection of numerous specific members of the category
2. the exemplar approach argues that people do not need to create a prototype

Question 19

Describe Anderson’s Adaptive Control of Thought-Rational (ACT-R) model.

Answer 19

It is a network model of semantic memory. Our knowledge about facts and things (i.e. declarative knowledge) is represented as propositional networks. Propositional networks are defined as a pattern of interconnected propositions (i.e. the smallest unit of knowledge that can be judged as true or false, e.g. Susan ate an apple). Sentences can be represented by propositional networks where each proposition is represented by a node and the links between nodes are represented by arrows. The network also represents the important relationships in the propositions. Furthermore, each of the concepts in a proposition can be represented by its own individual network.

Question 20

Describe the general characteristics of the parallel distributed processing approach.

Answer 20

1. cognitive processes are based on parallel operations that proceed simultaneously
2. networks link numerous neuron-like nodes
3. information spreads from one node to other nodes in a process called spreading activation
4. current context only activates certain components of a concept’s meaning, not every link connected to that node

Question 21

Define spontaneous generalization.

Answer 21

Spontaneous generalization is when information is missing and people use individual cases to draw inferences about general information. They draw a conclusion about a general category.

Question 22

Define default assignment.

Answer 22

Default assignment is a method used to fill in missing information about a particular person or object based on information from other similar people or objects. People draw a conclusion about a specific member of a category.

Question 23

What are the four theoretical features that distinguish the PDP approach?

Answer 23

1. the connections between neuron-like units are weighted and the weights determine how much activation one unit can pass to another unit
2. when a unit reaches a critical level of activation it can affect other units by exciting or inhibiting them
3. new experiences with a particular item cause adjustments to be made to the weights of connections between the relevant units
4. sometimes we have partial memory for some information instead of complete perfect memory (i.e. graceful degradation)

Question 24

What is a schema?

Answer 24

Schemas are generalized, well-integrated knowledge about a situation, an event, or a person. A schema is a kind of heuristic.

Question 25

What is a script?

Answer 25

A script is a simple, well-structured sequence of events that usually occur in a specified order. Scripts are a prototype of a series of events associated with a highly familiar activity. A script is a common kind of schema.

Question 26

What is a heuristic?

Answer 26

A heuristic is a general rule that is typically accurate.

Question 27

What is a life script?

Answer 27

A life script is a list of events that a person believes would be most important throughout his or her lifetime. Life scripts are important because people within a culture often share similar life scripts.

Question 28

What are the four trends in the memory of schema-inconsistent material?

Answer 28

1. if the information describes a minor event and time is limited, people tend to remember information accurately when it is consistent with a schema
2. if the information describes a minor event and time is limited, people do not remember information that is inconsistent with the schema
3. people seldom create a completely false memory for a lengthy event that did not occur
4. when the information describes a major event that is inconsistent with the standard schema, people are likely to remember that event

Question 29

What is boundary extension?

Answer 29

Boundary extension refers to our tendency to remember having viewed a greater portion of a scene than was actually shown. We have a schema for a scene and our cognitive processes fill in the incomplete objects based on our expectations.

Question 30

What is abstraction?

Answer 30

Abstraction is a memory process that stores the meaning of a message, rather than the exact words.

Question 31

What is verbatim memory.

Answer 31

Word-for-word recall

Question 32

What is the constructive model of memory?

Answer 32

People integrate information from individual sentences in order to construct larger ideas. Once sentences are fused in memory, we cannot untangle them into their original components and recall those components verbatim. We typically store an abstract of the information, rather than a word-for-word representation.

Question 33

What is the pragmatic view of memory?

Answer 33

People pay attention to the aspect of a message that is most relevant to their current goals. People know that they usually need to accurately recall the gist of a sentence and they don’t usually need to remember the specific wording. However, when people do need to pay attention to the specific wording, then they know that their verbatim memory needs to be highly accurate.

Question 34

What is memory integration?

Answer 34

Memory integration is using background knowledge to incorporate new information into memory in a schema-consistent manner. As a result, people may remember schema-consistent information that is not part of the original stimulus material.