Chapter 9: Conceptual Knowledge

Question 1

conceptual knowledge

Answer 1

enables us to recognize objects and events and to make inferences about their properties

Question 2

concept

Answer 2

mental representation used for a variety of cognitive functions

Question 3

categorization

Answer 3

the process by which things are placed into groups called categories. Categories are all possible examples of a particular concept.

Question 4

why categories are useful

Answer 4

help to understand individual cases not previously encountered, “pointers to knowledge”, categories provide a wealth of general info about an item, allows us to identify the special characteristics of a particular item.

Question 5

definitional approach to categorization

Answer 5

determine category membership based on whether the object meets the definition of the category, doesn’t work well, not all members of everyday categories have the same defining features.

Question 6

family resemblance

Answer 6

things in a category resemble one another in a number of ways, but do not have to share every feature

Question 7

the prototype approach

Answer 7

an abstract representation of the “typical” member of a category, characteristic features that describe what members of that concept are like, an average category members encountered in the past, contains most salient features, true of most instances of that category.

Question 8

low prototypicality

Answer 8

a category member does not closely resemble the category prototype

Question 8

high prototypicality

Answer 8

a category member closely resembles the category prototype

Question 9

typicality effect

Answer 9

prototypical objects are processed preferentially. Prototypical objects are judged more rapidly.

Question 10

Rosch experiment

Answer 10

hearing “green” primes a highly prototypical “green”, showed that priming resulted in faster “same” judgements for prototypical colors than for non-prototypical colors.

Question 11

the exemplar approach

Answer 11

concept is represented by multiple examples rather than one single prototype, examples are actual category members, to categorize you compare the new item to stored examples. Explains typicality effect, easily takes into account atypical cases, deals with variable categories.

Question 12

exemplar vs. prototype approach

Answer 12

exemplar is similar to prototype view because representing a category is not defining it. different because representation is not abstract, descriptions of specific examples. The more similar a specific exemplar is to a known category member, the faster it will be categorized. Exemplar works best for small categories, prototypes works best for larger categories.

Question 13

Hierarchical organization

Answer 13

to fully understand how people categorize objects, one must consider properties of objects, and learning and experience of perceivers.

Question 14

Semantic networks

Answer 14

concepts are arranged in networks that represent the way concepts are organized in the mind

Question 15

Collins and Quillian experiment

Answer 15

found concepts are linked, model for how concepts and properties are associated in the mind. Node = category/concept. Results show greater distances are associated with longer reaction times, when verifying statements both about properties of canaries and about categories of which the canary is a member.

Question 16

cognitive economy

Answer 16

shared properties are only stored at higher-level nodes, exceptions are stored at lower nodes.

Question 17

spreading activation

Answer 17

activation is the arousal level of a nose. When a node is activated, activity spreads out along all connected links. Concepts that receive activation are primed and more easily accessed from memory.

Question 18

Lexical decision task

Answer 18

participants read stimuli and are asked to say as quickly as possible whether the item is a word or not.

Question 19

Meyer and Schvanveldt experiment

Answer 19

“yes” if both strings are words, “no” if not. Some pairs were closely associated, reaction time was faster for those pairs. Used spreading activation.

Question 20

Criticism of Collins and Quillian

Answer 20

cannot explain typicality effect, cognitive economy, some sentence-verification results are problematic for the model.

Question 21

Collins and Loftus modifications experiment

Answer 21

shorter links to connect closely related concepts, longer links for less closely related concepts, no hierarchical structure; based on person’s experience.

Question 22

Assessment of semantic networks

Answer 22

it’s predictive and explanatory of some results, but not all. Generated multiple experiments, and lacks falsifiability - no rules for determining link length or how long activation will spread.

Question 23

Sensory-functional hypothesis

Answer 23

different brain areas may be specialized to process information about different categories. Double dissociation for categories “living things” and “nonliving things”, category specific memory impairment.

Question 24

Semantic category approach

Answer 24

specific neural circuits for specific categories

Question 25

multiple factor approach

Answer 25

use distributed representation and crowding.

Question 26

distributed representation

Answer 26

how concepts are divided within a category

Question 27

crowding

Answer 27

when different concepts within a category share many properties. Example - animals all have eyes, legs, ability to move.

Question 28

The embodied approach

Answer 28

knowledge of concepts is based on reactivation of sensory and motor processes that occur when we interact with the objects

Question 29

mirror neurons

Answer 29

fire when we do a task or we observe another doing that same task

Question 30

semantic somatotopy

Answer 30

correspondence between words related to specific body parts and the location of brain activation.

Question 31

Levels of categories

Answer 31

Global - furniture, lose a lot of information, superordinate, umbrella term.
Basic - table, in the middle, some common features between global and specific.
Specific - kitchen table, gain just a little information, subordinate.

Question 32

Why is the basic-level special?

Answer 32

people almost exclusively use basic-level names in free naming tasks. Quicker to identify basic-level category member as a member of a category. Children learn basic-level concepts sooner than other levels. Basic-level is much more common in adult discourse than names for superordinate categories. Different cultures tend to use the same basic-level categories, at least for living things.