Chapter 8 General Knowledge Flashcards
What is semantic memory
General knowledge, lexical or language knowledge, and conceptual knowledge
What is situated cognition approach
Our knowledge depends on the context surrounding us
Semantic memory allows us to…
Organize objects according to concepts,
Make inferences going beyond the information given,
Decide which objects are similar
What is inference
The logical interpretations and conclusion that were never part of the original stimulus
What is episodic memory
Memory that contains information about events that have happened to us
What is category
A set of objects that belong together which the cognitive system considers to be at least partly equivalent
What is concept
A mental representations of a category
What is a prototype
The item that is most typical and representative of the category
What is the prototype approach
We decide whether an item belongs to a category by comparing that item with a prototype
Eleanor Rosch
What is a graded structure
Members of categories are not all crated equally
What is the typicality effect
When judging whether an item belongs to a particular category, typical items are judged
What is the semantic priming effect
People respond faster to an item if it was proceeded by an item with similar meaning
What is family resemblance
No single attribute shared by all examples of a concept
Each example has at least one attribute in common with some other examples of the concept
Levels of categorization
Superorduabte, basic, subordinate levels
Basic level names are used to identify objects
Rosch and colleagues (1976)
Conclusions about the prototype approach
The approach an account for our ability to form concepts for groups that are loosely structured
What is the exemplar approach
First learn some specific examples of a concept (exemplars), then classify each new stimulus by deciding how closely it resembles those specific examples
Comparing the Prototype and Exemplar Approaches
Both compare a new item against a stored representation of the category.
prototype approach:
-> Stored representation is a typical member of the category.
exemplar approach:
-> Stored representation is a collection of numerous specific members of the category.
Superordiante- level categories
Higher-level or more general categories
Animals, tools, buildings, (super broad)
Basic-level categories
Moderately specific categories
Chairs, dogs, classrooms
Subordinate level categories
Lover-level or more specific categories
Golden retriever, desk chair, lecture hall
Pros of the exemplar approach
No need to perform abstraction process
argues that the prototype approach would
force you to discard useful, specific data about individual cases
Cons of the exemplar approach
more suitable for categories with relatively few members
Individual differences in representations may be substantial.
ACT-R
Adapted control of thought-rational
Attempts to account for a wide variety of cognitive tasks
The parallel distributed processing approach (PDP)
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.