Chpt 9: Conceptual Knowledge (PSY311) Flashcards
Conceptual Knowledge lives in our _________ memory
semantic
Def: conceptual knowledge
Conceptual knowledge: enables us to recognize objects & events.
What’s the concept of conceptual knowledge?
Mental representation used for cognitive functions
Like dogs, cats, ppl, cares, street signs, books, you get the idea.
Explain your brain’s categorization
Process by which things are placed into diff groups that are called categories.
Why are Categories Helpful?
Helps us understand.
Prior comparisons, sets expectations for events & stimuli
Saves processing time for new events & stimuli.
Not all of the prototypes of everyday categories have the same features.
Method of determining categorization based on whether or not the ________ meets the def; which isn’t great.
concept
Not all members of everyday _______ have the same defining _________.
categories, features
Def: prototype
Prototype: an average representation of the typical member of a category.
Characteristic features that describe members.
A fictional, in your mind average.
Imagine a table, just a random one
Def: high prototypicality
High prototypicality: category member that closely resumes that category prototype.
Def: low prototypicality
Low prototypicality: category member doesn’t closely resemble the category prototype.
________ proposed that our typical prototype is based on a n average of members of a category that we commonly experience & see ______ in our daily lives.
Describes these variations within categories as representing _____ in typicality.
Rosch, often, diffs
Rosch & Mervis
Experiment
Had participants list many characteristics & attributes for everyday objects.
There’s a strong relationship between family resemblance & prototypicality.
Participants tend to list the most prototypical members of the category first.
Rosch’s demonstration of the prototypical members
Participants heard the prime first, which was the name of a color.
A couple secs later, they were shown a pair of colors by pressing a key as fast as they could, whether the 2 colors were the same or not.
The colors that participants saw after hearing the prime were paired in 3 ways:
Colors were the same & were good examples of the category
Colors were the same but were poor examples
Colors were diff, with the 2 colors coming from diff categories.
The important result came from the 2 same groups.
Priming resulted in faster same judgements for the prototypical (good) colors than the non prototypical colors.
When participants hear a color word, they imagine a good.
Why is the Rosch demonstration important?
Rosch’s demonstration was important bc it represented a great advance over the definitional approach bc it provided a good amount of experimental evidence that all items within a category aren’t the same.
Def: Typicality effects
Typicality effects: prototypical concepts are processed faster than low prototypical concepts.
Smith et al (‘74)
experiment
Participants took longer to identify a pomegranate as a fruit compared to an apple.
Slower reaction times for less prototypical concepts like fruits & animals.
Takes longer to verify less __________ things bc they have fewer ________ in common.
prototypical, features
Prototypes can _______ when there’s ______ info.
shift/change, new
Def: The Exemplar Approach
The Exemplar Approach explains typicality effect, easily taking into account atypical cases/real comparisons.
Accounts for variable categories
Exemplars might work best for smaller categories bc singular examples best represent the whole group
Prototype might work _______ for larger categories bc there are so many ____________ to be made.
best, comparisons
Def: exemplars
Exemplars are actual members of the category that a person has encountered in their past.
___________________approach can explain many of Rosch’s results, which were used to support the prototype approach.
The Exemplar
Def: Hierarchical organization
larger, more general categories are divided into smaller, more specific categories, creating a number of levels of categories.
Hierarchical organization features of model of conceptual knowledge:
Hierarchically organized
Evaluated in terms of explanatory power
Evaluated in terms of cognitive economy.
Tanaka & Taylor (‘91) experiment on expert categorization V. Novice categorization
Had experts & novices name/categorize diff birds at basic & specific instances.
Experts named more of the specific instances.
The novices categorized more of the basic instances.
Goal of memory models is to _______ map out how info is ________ in our storage memory
accurately, organized
Def: Semantic Network Model
A model for how concepts & properties are organized.
Node - category/concept
Links - relationships.
Specific concepts are shown in color.
Considered a hierarchical model due to the model having levels that are listed off by concepts.
More concepts that are specific are called canaries and salmons which are at the bottom and more general concepts are higher up on the model.
Canary mode:
Canary is just an example.
If you want to obtain info in your mind abt what a canary is, first you’d find that a canary is a bird and they sing. To get to more info abt them, you gotta move up a l ink to learn that a canary is a bird with wings, can fly, and that it has feathers.
If you move along up another level, you can find that a canary is an animal, with skin and can move.
Yes, you can just find out that a canary is a bird on the first level. However, Collins claimed that if you include that a canary can fly, that is true for all birds and it’s inefficient which would use up too much storage space.
This activation spreads to other nearby notes thru the links
Semantic Network Model was made by whom?
Collins & Quillian
Def: Spreading Activation (chpt 9)
the arousal that spreads out of a level to a link that is connected to a node that is activated.
The idea that spreading activation can influence ________ was studied by Meyer & Schvaneveldt in a paper published shortly after Collins & Quillian’s model was made. They used a method called ______________________
priming, Lexical Decision Task.
Def: The Lexical Decision Task
reading stimuli some of the words aren’t worlds. The task is to indicate as fast as you can.
When a ______ is activated, activity ________ out and aligns all connected links.
When we think of or encounter a work/object, we activate that node.
node, spreads
Concepts that receive _______ are primed & more easily accessible.
Ex: a robin, we see it in our node for the robin is activated.
Then, it spreads thru nearby links to other nodes (bird, animal, canary, you get it).
This makes them faster to activate in the STM
activation
We see ________ response times for concepts that travel less out (only 1 link away) compared to others that are even more links away.
faster
What are some limitations to the Collins & Quillian Model?
Not meant to mirror physiology but instead it’s to indicate how concepts & their properties are associated in our minds, & it’s used to make predictions abt how we retrieve properties associated with every concept.
Hard to explain typicality effects on distance and activation.
Typical examples are responded more quickly than atypical
Some response time results don’t fit the model
Collin’s & Quillian model was great with _________________.
Generally, info is stored efficiently and does not ______ at diff levels.
cognitive economy, overlap
Def: Semantic network approach
propose that concepts are arranged in networks.
3 Levels of categories:
Superordinate level/global level
Ex: furniture
Basic level
Ex: table
Subordinate level/specific level
Kitchen table
Who proposed that the basic level is psychologically special bc going above it results in a larger loss of info and going below results in little gain of info?
Rosch
Coley & Co
experiment
Asked Northwestern University undergrads to name 44 diff plants on a walk around campus.
75% of the responses used labels like tree, rather than oak tree
Our ability to _________ is learned from experience & depends on which objects we typically _________ & what characteristics of these objects we pay attention to.
categorize, encounter
The Connectionist Approach
founded by who?
Founded by McClelland & Rumelhart.
Def: The Connectionist Approach
Based on connectionism. It can explain a lot of findings, which includes how concepts are learned & how damage to our brain can affect our knowledge abt such concepts.
Def: Connectionism:
an approach to creating computer models for representing cognitive processes that we experience on a daily basis in our brains.
Def: Parallel Distributed Processing (PDP):
propose that concepts are represented by activity that’s distributed across a network.
Def: Units
like neurons, that are activated by stimuli from the environment.
Def: Input units
stimuli presented by the experimenter.
Def: Connection weight
determines how signals sent from one unit either increase or decrease the activity of the next upcoming unit.
_________ connection weight results in a strong tendency to excite the next one, ________ weights can cause less excitation, & negative weights can decrease excitation 0r inhibit activation of the receiving unit.
High, lower
What 2 things do units in a network depend on?
The signal that originates in the input units
The connection weight thru the entire network
For the network to work, the connection weights have to be ________ so that activating the concept unit canary & relation units can activate only for the _________ units that are associated with that category.
adjusted, property
Def: Error signal
a signal that is sent back thru the network.
Def: Back propagation
the process that the error signal undergoes. The error signals are sent back to the hidden units & the representation units provide info abt how the connection weights should be adjusted so that the correct property units will now be activated.
What results also support the idea of connectionism?
The operation of connectionist networks isn’t totally disrupted by damage.
Connectionist networks can explain generalization of learning.
The Sensory-Functional Hypothesis was founded by who?
Founded by Warrington & Shallice who reported on 4 patients who had suffered memory loss from encephalitis.
Def: Category-specific memory impairment
an impairment in which they had lost the ability to identify one type of object but retained the ability to identify other types of objects.
Def: Sensory-functional (SF) hypothesis
states that our ability to differentiate living things & artifacts depends on a memory system that distinguishes sensory attributes & a system that distinguishes functions.
Def: Multiple factor approach
searches for factors that go beyond our sensory & functional processes that determine who concepts are divided within a category.
Def: Crowding
refers to the fact that animals tend to share many properties.
Def: Semantic Category approach
proposes that there are specific neural circuits in the brain for some specific categories.
According to_________________________ there’s a limited number of categories that are innately determined bc of their importance for our survival.
Focusing on areas of the brain that are specialized to _________ to specific types of stimuli, it also can emphasize that the brain’s response to items from a specific category is distributed over a number of diff cortical areas.
Mahon & Carmazza, respond
Def: The Embodied approach
states that our knowledge of concepts is based on reactivation of sensory & motor processes that happen when we interact with an object.
When one uses a hammer, sensory areas are activated in response to the hammer’s size, shape, & color, plus the motor areas are activated that are involved in carrying out actions involved in using a hammer.
Def: Semantic somatotopy
the correspondence between words related to specific parts of the body & the location of brain activity.
According to the _________ Approach, one who has issues producing actions associated with objects should have issues recognizing those objects.
Embodied
The _________ approach isn’t well suited to explaining our knowledge of abstract concepts like democracy or truth. But, it can offer explanations in response to those criticisms.
Embodied
What do all of the approaches have in common?
All of the approaches agree that the info abt concepts is distributed across many structures in the brain, with each approach emphasizing diff types of info.
The _____________________approach emphasizes the role of many diff features and properties.
multiple factor
The ________________ approach emphasizes specialized areas of the brain & networks connecting these areas.
category specific
The ____________ approach emphasizes activity caused by the sensory & motor properties of objects.
embodied
