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.
What is a node
One unit located within the network
What is spreading activation
A single activation expands or spreads from one node to the other connected nodes
Four general characteristics of PDP
Based on parallel operations, rather then serial operations
Network contains nodes which are counted with many links
Spreading activation
Situated cognition
What is declarative knowlange
Knowledge about facts and things
Propositional network
A pattern of interconnected propositions
What is proposition
Smallest unit of knowledge that can be judged wither true or false
What is situated cognition
The current context often activities only certain components of a concept’s meaning
What is spontaneous generalization
Using individual cases to draw a conclusion about a general category
What is default assignment
Drawing a conclusion about a specific member of a category using our category knowledge
More information about PDP
Slides 467 to 471!!
Graceful degradation
The brains ability to provide partial memory
(Tip of the tongue, brain function after an accident or stroke)
Schema
Generalization, well-integrated knowledge about a situation, an event or a person
Background on schemas
Schema theories propose that our memories encode “generic” information about a situation, then use this information to understand and remember new examples of the schema.
“This is just like what happened when . . .”
Heuristic
A general rule that is typically accurate
Script
Simple, well-structured sequence of events
Life scripts
A list of events that a person believes would be most important throughout his or her lifetime
-people within a culture often share similar life
scripts
-violations of a familiar script can be surprising and unsettling
Identifying the script in advance
Scripts are recalled more accurately of identified in advance
Trafimow and Wyer
Events in a sequence are more memorable if you understand that they are all part of a script
Trafimow and Wyer (1993)
-scripts with irrelevant details
-script-identifying event, either first or last recall events
-Event recall was higher when the script- identifying event was presented first, rather than last.
Brewer and Teryens (1981)
recall objects from an office waiting room highly likely to recall objects consistent
with “office schema”
“remembered” items that were not in the
room, but were consistent with “office schema”
General Conclusions about Schemas and
Memory Selection
People seldom create a completely false
memory for a lengthy event that did not occur
When the information describes a major event that is inconsistent with the standard schema, people are likely to remember that event
Boundary Extension
Out tendency to remember having viewed a greater portion of a scene than was actually shown
Intraub and colleagues
see photo then draw replica of photo Participants consistently produced a
sketch that extended the boundaries beyond the view presented in the original photo.
activate a perceptual schema
Abstraction
A memory process that stores the meaning of a message but not the exact words
Verbatim Memory
Word-for-word recall
People usually have poor verbatim memory
Constructive model of memory
People integrate information from individual sentences in order to construct larger ideas; later, they cannot untangle the constructed information from the verbatim sentences.
Bransford and Franks (1971)
listen to sentences from several different stories
recognition test including new items
People were convinced that they had seen these new items before
False alarms were particularly likely for complex sentences consistent with the original schema.
False alarms were unlikely for sentences violating the meaning of the earlier sentences.
False alarm
Occurs when people “remember” an item that was not originally presented
Pragmatic view of memory
People pay attention to the aspect of a message that is most relevant to their current goals.
Murphy and Shapiro (1994) insult study
read letters from “Samantha” to cousin or boyfriend
bland vs. sarcastic comments
recognition test on original, paraphrased, or irrelevant sentences
Correct recognition was higher for sentences from the sarcastic condition than for sentences in the bland condition.
more false alarms for paraphrases of bland sentences than sarcastic sentences
more accurate verbatim memory for the sarcastic version than for the bland version
The Current Status of Schemas and Memory Abstraction
two compatible approaches
In many cases, we integrate information into large schemas.
In some cases, we know that specific words matter and pay close attention to precise wording.
Memory integration
Background knowledge encourages people to take in new information in a schema-consistent fashion.
People may remember schema-consistent information, even though it was not part of the original stimulus material.
Schemas do not always operate. Factors such as delay before testing and task complexity influence the use of schemas.
The Classic Research on Memory Integration
Schemas can influence our inferences when we are reading ambiguous or unclear material.
When we have the correct background knowledge, it is generally useful.
Gender stereotypes
widely shared sets of beliefs about the characteristics of females and males
Research About Memory Integration Based on Gender Stereotypes
When people know someone’s gender, they often draw conclusions about that individual’s personal characteristics
Implicit Association Test (IAT)
based on the principle that people can mentally pair two related words together much more easily than they can pair two unrelated words
Schemas often influence our cognitive processes:
in the initial selection of material in remembering visual scenes
in abstraction
in the final process of integration
Summary
Slides 512-513
