Chapter 9: Conceptual Knowledge

Question 1

Knowledge that enables people to recognize objects and events and to make inferences about their properties.

Answer 1

Conceptual knowledge

Question 2

A mental representation of a class or individual. Also, the meaning of objects, events, and abstract ideas. An example of this would be the way a person mentally represents “cat” or “house.”

Answer 2

Concepts

Question 3

Groups of objects that belong together because they belong to the same class of objects, such as “houses,” “furniture,” or “schools.”

Also known as “pointers to knowledge.” Once you know something is in a _____, you know a lot of general things about it and can focus your energy on specifying what is special about this particular object. Example: If you identify an animal as a “cat,” you already know a lot more about it (sleeps a lot, meows, purrs, rubs up on things).

Answer 3

Category

Question 4

The process by which objects are placed in categories.

Answer 4

Categorization

Question 5

The idea that we can decide whether something is a member of a category by determining whether the object meets the definition of the category (when it meets a definite set of criteria).

Doesn’t work because most categories contain members that do not conform to the definition. Example from text: all of these are possible “chairs,” yet they don’t resemble each other.

Answer 5

Definitional approach to categorization

Question 6

In considering the process of categorization, the idea that things in a particular category resemble each other in a number of ways. This approach can be contrasted with the definitional approach, which states that an object belongs to a category only when it meets a definite set of criteria.

• Proposed by philosopher Wittgenstein to deal with the fact that definitions do not include all members of a category.

Answer 6

Family resemblance

Question 7

An approach to categorization where we decide whether an object belongs to a category by deciding whether it is similar to a standard representative of the category.

Answer 7

Prototypical approach to categorization

Question 8

A standard representative of a category formed by averaging category members a person has encountered in the past.

Answer 8

Prototype

Question 9

A term used to describe how well an object resembles the prototype of a particular category.

Answer 9

Prototypicality

Question 10

These types of objects have high family resemblance, statements about them are verified rapidly, they are named first, and are affected more by priming.

Answer 10

High-prototypical objects

Question 11

A technique in which the participant is asked to indicate whether a particular sentence is true or false. For example, sentences like “An apple is a fruit” have been used in studies on categorization.

Answer 11

Sentence verification technique

Question 12

An approach to categorization that involves determining whether an object is similar to an actual member of a category that a person has encountered in the past.

Answer 12

Exemplar approach to categorization

Question 13

An actual member of a category that a person has encountered in the past.

Answer 13

Exemplar

Question 14

An advantage to this approach of categorization is that it doesn’t discard information about atypical cases within a category, such as penguin in the “bird” category. This approach can also deal more easily with categories that contain widely varying members, such as games.

Answer 14

Exemplar approach

Question 15

The kind of organization in which larger, more general categories are divided into smaller, more specific categories.

Experiments by Rosch indicate that a basic level of categories (such as guitar, as opposed to musical instrument or rock guitar) is a “basic” level of categorization that reflects people’s everyday experience.

Answer 15

Hierarchical organization

Question 16

Rosch proposed that the _____ level is psychologically special because going above it (to global) results in a large loss of information and going below it (to specific) results in little gain of information.

Answer 16

Basic level

Question 17

Generally, people with more expertise and familiarity with a particular category tend to focus on the more distinct information that Rosch associated with the _____ level.

Answer 17

Specific (subordinate) level

Question 18

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

Collins and Quillian’s model includes nodes for each concept. Additional properties of a concept can be determined by moving up the network, along the lines connecting the concepts. For example, moving from “canary” up to “bird” indicates that canaries have feathers and wings and can fly. Dashed lines indicate the distance in the network from canary to bird and from bird to animal.

Answer 18

Semantic network approach

Question 19

Collins and Quillian’s model is a network that consists of nodes connected by links. Concepts and properties of concepts are located at the nodes. Properties that hold for most members of a concept are stored at higher level nodes. This is called _____.

Answer 19

Cognitive economy

Question 20

Activity that spreads out along any link in a semantic network that is connected to an activated node.

Thus, activating the canary-to-bird pathway activates additional concepts that are connected to “bird,” such as “animal” and other types of birds. The result of this _____ is that the additional concepts that receive this activation become “primed” and so can be retrieved more easily from memory.

Answer 20

Spreading activation

Question 21

An approach to creating computer models for representing cognitive processes. This approach has gained favor among many researchers because:

1. it is inspired by how information is represented in the brain; and
2. it can explain a number of findings, including how concepts are learned and how damage to the brain affects people’s knowledge about concepts.

Answer 21

Connectionism

Question 22

Proposes that concepts are represented in networks that consist of input units, hidden units, and output units, and that information about concepts is represented in these networks by a distributed activation of these units. This approach is also called the parallel distributed processing (PDP) approach.

Answer 22

Connectionist approach

Question 23

An approach that explains how concepts are represented in the brain which emphasizes specialized areas of the brain and networks connecting these areas. This approach proposes that there are specific neural circuits for some specific categories (a “category map”).

Answer 23

Semantic category approach

Question 24

An approach that explains how concepts are represented in the brain which states that our knowledge of concepts is based on reactivation of sensory and motor processes that occur when we interact with the object.

Answer 24

Embodied approach

Question 25

An approach that explains how concepts are represented in the brain which states that our ability to differentiate living things and artifacts (non-living things) depends on a memory system that distinguishes sensory attributes and a system that distinguishes functions.

For example, distinguishing between a tiger and a leopard depends on perceiving stripes and spots (sensory). Artifacts, in contrast, are more likely to be distinguished by their function. For example, a screwdriver, chisel, and hammer are all tools but are used for different purposes (turning screws, scraping, and pounding nails).

Answer 25

Sensory-functional hypothesis

Question 26

An approach that explains how concepts are represented in the brain which emphasizes the role of many different features and properties.

Answer 26

Multiple-factor approach

Question 27

Proposes that different functions in the brain are integrated by the anterior temporal lobe (ATL).

Answer 27

Hub and spoke model

Question 28

Area in the temporal lobe. Damage to this area has been connected with semantic deficits in dementia patients and with the savant syndrome. Semantic dementia causes a general loss of knowledge for all concepts.

Answer 28

Anterior temporal lobe (ATL)

Question 29

This form of dementia causes a general loss of knowledge for all concepts.

Answer 29

Semantic dementia