Chapter 8 - The Organization of Knowledge in the Mind

Question 1

Concept

Answer 1

The fundamental unit of symbolic knowledge (knowledge of correspondence between symbols and their meaning).

Question 2

Category

Answer 2

A hierarchy of concepts placed together since they share common features, or are similar to a certain prototype; a category is a concept with members (for example, the concept bird has the members hawk, blue jay etc).

Question 3

Natural categories

Answer 3

Groupings that occur naturally, like birds or trees.

Question 4

Artifact categories

Answer 4

Groupings that are designed or invented by humans to serve a particular purpose.

Question 5

Ad hoc categories

Answer 5

Categories where the content varies, depending on the context.

Question 6

Basic level

Answer 6

A level in the hierarchy of a categiry that is preferred, that is neither the most specific or the most abstract. The level with the most distinctive features that set it off from other concepts at the same level.

Question 7

Feature-based view of concepts

Answer 7

Concepts have a few defining features that they need to have in order to fit into the concept.

Question 8

Prototype theory

Answer 8

Grouping things together by their similarity to an averaged model of the category.

Question 9

Prototype

Answer 9

An abstract average of all the objects in the category we previously have encountered. Objects that are prototypical have a high family resemblance.

Question 10

Characteristic features

Answer 10

Features that describe the prototype, and are commonly but not always present.

Question 11

Classical concepts

Answer 11

Categories that can be readily defined through defining features; tend to be inventions that experts have devised for labelling a class that has associated defining features.

Question 12

Fuzzy concepts

Answer 12

Concepts that can not be easily defined through defining features; tend to evolve naturally.

Question 13

Exemplar theory

Answer 13

Instead of using a single abstract prototype for categorizing a concept, we use multiple, specific exemplars. Categories are set up by creating a rule and then by storing examples as exemplars, and objects are compared to them to decide if they belong in the category.

Question 14

Exemplars

Answer 14

Typical representatives of a category, not necessarily averaged over all objects, can be of different subtypes of objects within a category.

Question 15

The varying abstraction model (VAM)

Answer 15

Prototypes and exemplars are just two extremes on a continuum of abstraction - we often use a number of intermediate representations. A theory of categorization can combine defining and characteristic features in a synthesis. Each category can have both a core and a prototype.

Question 16

Core

Answer 16

The defining features something must have to be considered an example of a category.

Question 17

Theory-based view of meaning

Answer 17

People understand and categorize concepts in terms of implicit theories, or general ideas they have regarding those concepts. People can distinguish between essential and incidental features of concepts because they have complex mental representations of these concepts.

Question 18

Essentialism

Answer 18

Certain categories have an underlying reality that cannot be observed directly.

Question 19

Semantic-network models

Answer 19

Knowledge is represented in the form of concepts that are connected in a web-like form.

Question 20

Collins and Quillian’s network model

Answer 20

Knowledge is represented in a hierarchical semantic network. The elements in the network (nodes) are typically concepts, and the connections between nodes are called relationships. This allows for a high degree of cognitive economy due to inheritance.

Question 21

Inheritance

Answer 21

Lower level items in a semantic network inherit the properties of higher level items.

Question 22

Schemas

Answer 22

Mental frameworks for organizing knowledge. Schemas are more task-oriented than semantic networks. How elaborate a schema is varies with individuals, their profession and experience with the concept. Schemas can contain many subschemas, and encompass typical, general facts that vary slightly from one instance to another. They also vary in their degree of abstraction.
Schemas can also include information about relationships among concepts, attributed within concepts, attributes in related concepts, causal (if-then) relationships etc.

Question 23

Script

Answer 23

A schema that contains information about the particular order in which things occur; less flexible than schemas in general. Scripts include default values for the actors, props, setting, and expected sequence of events. Scripts seem to guide what people recall and recognize, and ultimately, what they know. We also have scripts for typical life stories (marriage, college, having children etc). The frontal and parietal lobes seem to be involved in the generation of scripts.

Question 24

Production

Answer 24

The generation and output of a procedure.

Question 25

Production system

Answer 25

Encompasses the entire set of rules (productions) for executing the task or using the skill.

Question 26

Semantic priming

Answer 26

Primed by a meaningful context/meaningful information.

Question 27

Repetition priming

Answer 27

Primed by repeated exposure to information.

Question 28

Anderson’s adaptive control of thought (ACT) model

Answer 28

Procedural knowledge is represented in the form of production systems, and declarative knowledge is represented in propositional (propositions = the smallest unit of knowledge that can be judged to be either true or false) networks.

Question 29

The ACT-R model

Answer 29

Integrating a network representation for declarative knowledge and a production system representation for procedural knowledge. In the ACT-R, networks include images of objects and corresponding spatial configurations and relationships, as well as temporal information involving sequencing of events. According to ACT-R, nodes can be either active or inactive at a given time, and nodes are activated by external (sensations) or internal (thoughts, memories) stimuli. Declarative knowledge may be learned through the strengthening of connections resulting from frequent use. Representation of procedural knowledge occurs in three stages: cognitive, associative, and autonomous.

Question 30

Proceduralization

Answer 30

The transformation of slow, explicit information about procedures into speedy, implicit implementations of procedures.

Question 31

Production tuning

Answer 31

We learn to generalize existing rules and apply them to new conditions, and we learn to discriminate new criteria for meeting the new condition.

Question 32

Parallel distributed processing models/connectionist models

Answer 32

We handle very large numbers of cognitive operations at once through a network distributed across incalculable numbers of locations in the brain. In the PDP model, the network is made up of neuron-like units, and do not represent concepts or categories. The pattern of connections represents the knowledge, not the specific units. Differing cognitive processes are handled by differing patterns of activation, rather than as a result of a different set of instructions from a CPU.

Question 33

Modular mind

Answer 33

The mind is divided into discrete modules working independently, each handling only one kind of input - an extremely domain specific view.