Concepts and Categorisation Flashcards
William James “The Principles of Psychology” (1890)
What would happen without categories and their corresponding concepts?
Infants don’t separate their sensory experience into parts, but instead experience “one great blooming, buzzing confusion”
You wouldn’t be able to distinguish one thing from another and interact with it
According to James we learn to recognise things
- why do we need to recognise types of things?
- what do concepts provide?
- what does language give us?
- We need to recognize (learn to recognize in James’s view, but maybe some things are innate) types of thing (people, objects, situations, properties) in order to act consistently and achieve our aims.
- Concepts give a handle on what those types of thing (members of the categories) have in common.
- Language gives us labels for concepts – sometimes single words, sometimes longer expressions (“American Psychologist” for William James and co.)
Concept:
1- what does a concept tell us?
2- example
3- vocab?
1- A concept tell us what makes something a member of a category. (It has to have various features and properties)
2- For something to be a bird it has to be A LIVING THING (an ANIMAL, in fact)
- For something to be a bird it has to HAVE FEATHERS
3- “has to” – so these are called NECESSARY CONDITIONS. And when you have a set of these necessary conditions, they should be together SUFFICIENT for being a bird.
Above were the classical views.
What are the two (equivalent) ways of turning this idea into a psychological theory of how concepts are stored and used?
- FEATURE THEORIES (we store the sets of conditions as lists of features)
- NETWORK THEORIES (we store concepts in networks with IS and HAS links (BIRD is ANIMAL; BIRD has FEATHERS)
Semantic Network of Concepts
1-
Animal (has skin, can move around, eats, breathes)
2-
Bird (has wings, can fly, has feathers)
Fish (has fins, can swim, has gills)
3-
Canary (can sing, is yellow)
Ostrich (has long thin legs, tall, can’t fly)
Shark (can bite, is dangerous)
Salmon (pink, edible, swims upstream to lay eggs)
Hierarchy
To be efficient:
At the higher level- properties that all animals have but lower down you don’t repeat those from the higher level
Eleanor Rosch and typicality
- Eleanor Rosch (and others) soon noted that features or network links are not all that matters
- Typical members of categories are processed more easily than atypical members (robin vs ostrich as an example of a bird)
- What is important is whether you’re a typical or native category
- They have a different status within the category
Prototype Theory
1- what did this idea lead to?
2- what is linked to what prototype things are close to
3- what is an alternative idea?
1- These observations led to the idea that concepts are represented by PROTOTYPES (not by lists of features, or relations in a network)
2- Category membership depends on which prototype a particular thing is closest to.
- So, depends on a measure of closeness
3- An alternative idea is that prototypes are not themselves represented, only exemplars, and it is the clustering of exemplars that determines the centre of the space that a particular concept occupies
What is the main problems for Prototype Theory
CONCEPTUAL COMBINATION
- We don’t just use individual concepts, we can combine them.
- Conceptual combination is a complex process: compare TIN + CAN => “tin can” and TIN + MINE = “tin mine”
- Conceptual combination has been seen as a particular problem for prototype theory
Conceptual Combination
prototypical pet + prototypical fish = prototypical pet fish
Name 2 other problems for Prototype Theory
AD HOC CONCEPTS
Concepts and their corresponding categories that are put together on the fly, and therefore not stored in memory
- E.g. things to save in a house fire – although they are not stored in memory, they do show prototype effects
MATHEMATICAL CONCEPTS
They do show prototypically effects (7 is a more prototypical odd number than 343239089), but they have clear analytical definitions (odd numbers are not divisible by 2) – they are not DEFINED by prototypes.
“Theory” Theory
- explain
- what does it deal well with?
Just as scientific concepts are defined by the role they play in scientific theories, our everyday concepts are defined by their place in lay theories about the world and how it “works”.
”Theory” theory deals well with conceptual combination, because, for example, lay theories tell us that cans can be made of tin, but mines cannot (but they can be a source of tin)
Basic Level Categories
In a hierarchy, such as Braeburn – Apple – Fruit, concepts at one of the levels are easiest to deal with (on all sorts of measures)
— In this case Apple, with other concepts at this level being, e.g., Banana and Orange
At this (basic) level, the features of one type of object have a strong “correlational structure”, which is different from that of other types of object.
— Apples are similar, but apples and bananas differ
— At the higher level, fruits are diverse
- So one piece of fruit is not necessarily very similar to another one
— At the lower level, Braeburns are similar to Galas and Granny Smiths
- So, things in different categories resemble one another
Psychological work has tended to focus on concepts associated with concrete nouns. What are the two main types?
1) Natural kinds (people, animals, plants, natural objects)
2) Artefacts (man made objects: table, building, etc.)
Types of Concept
1- what are less studied?
2- what other concepts are there?
1- Less studied are abstract concepts, including scientific concepts (gravity, evolution, etc.) and social/societal concepts (family, law, government, etc.)
2- There are also concepts associated with verbs (events – “hit”, states – “admire”, processes – “decay” ) and adjectives (properties of nouns, “red”) and adverbs (properties of verbs, “suddenly”)
And there are concepts that help to link ideas (“and”, “because”, “before”)
What are abstract concepts?
Making metaphorical links
Theres a parallel between abstract state and things being in contained
Abstract Concepts: Lakoff and Johnson’s “Metaphors We Live By”
1- what is one account of abstract concepts?
2- example
3- not just…
1- One account of abstract concepts is that they are understood via networks of (metaphorical) links to concrete concepts (Lakoff & Johnson’s, 1980, “Metaphors we live by”)
2- Example Metaphor: an abstract state of being is a “container”:
I’m in the room
I’m in love trouble
He fell into a hole
He fell into depression
You’ll never get out of prison
You’ll never get out of trouble
3- Not just “figures of speech” but fundamental conceptual frameworks
Embodiment:
- what is the traditional treatment of concepts?
- what is a more recent set of ideas?
- coding of concepts in relation to what?
- The traditional treatment of concepts is via formal analysis
- A more recent set of ideas is that to understand many concepts you have to know how people interact with the world – to know what is meant by “chair” for example, you don’t just need to know that is it something to sit on, but to understand how and why people sit down (via the experience of doing it)
- Furthermore, the encoding of such concepts may have much in common with our motor knowledge of how to interact with (“use”) chairs.
Embodiment and the motor cortex – “An arm and a leg”
- what supports this idea?
- what was applied?
- reaction results?
- what is language?
- where is the device put?
- Studies looking at brain activity support this idea
- They applied TMS (Transcortical Magnetic Stimulation) to motor brain regions
- Faster reactions to leg-related words (“kick”) with leg region stimulation and faster reactions to arm-related words (“pick”) with arm region stimulation
- Language is not modular or abstract but an integrated part of experience
- Put the device over the but that controls arm movements and get faster reactions to words relating to arms (and the same applied for leg-related words)
The Action Compatibility Effect (ACE)
1- what is an OK sentence
2- the reaction required to respond is compatible with?
3- responses are quicker with?
1-
— Pushing a lever away from you to confirm that “You closed the drawer” is an OK sentence
— Pulling a lever towards you to confirm that “You opened the drawer” is an OK sentence
2- The action required to respond is compatible (in direction) with the action described
3- Responses are quicker than with the opposite pairings (close/towards; open/away)
Embodied Cognition: Up and Down
Pecher et al. (2010)
Study phase
Respond “yes” or “no” to: “Is it found in the sky?” or “Is it found in the ocean?”
— List of “sky” words (e.g. helicopter) and “ocean” words (e.g. whale)
Each word (NOT pictures) presented at the top or bottom of the screen
Where do participants expect the word (based on embodied experience)?
”helicopter” – top; “whale” - bottom
Embodied Cognition: Up and Down
Results
Responses were slower when the type of word (e.g. helicopter or whale) doesn’t match the word’s expected position (top for sky words; bottom for ocean words)
“It may be that people perform a mental simulation of the task-congruent location, which directs spatial attention and facilitates processing of targets in that location.”
Note that there is an effect of congruence between the type of word and the type of decision as well as between type of word and position
If making ocean decision, quicker for ocean words than sky words and vise versa
Grey bars are higher- The effect of interest is a compatibility effect. You’re faster to respond to helicopter at the top of the screen
Embodied Cognition and Shape Imagery
Zwaan, Stanfield and Yaxley (2002)
Text representations should include perceptual properties, even if those properties are not mentioned.
Sentence followed by picture – participants had to name the picture
Compatibility effect- what the bird would look like doing the thing you describe
Embodied Cognition and Shape Imagery
Results
In the consistent cases you get faster responses
Naming RTs are quicker for consistent cases
Embodied Cognition – Orientation and Colour
- Stanfield and Zwaan (2001) reported similar effects for orientation (vertical pencil/putting in pot, horizontal pencil/putting in drawer).
- There has been some controversy about whether the opposite effect can be found (incompatibility leads to faster responses)
— Connell (2005, 2007) reported such an effect for colour (pick a leaf off a tree – orange/brown vs pick a leaf off the ground – green)
— However, Zwaan & Pecher (2012) failed to replicate this effect and instead found a standard compatibility effect.
Embodied Language: More on Colour
Connell and Lynott (2009)
Study
- Participants read a sentence implying a particular colour for the target:
— “Joe was excited to see a bear in the woods” -> brown bear (typical prime)
— “Joe was excited to see a bear at the North Pole” -> white bear (atypical prime)
- Then asked to name the colour of a target word in three conditions (Stroop-like task):
Typical- normal bear
Atypical- polar bear
Unrelated- pooh bear
Embodied Language: More on Colour
Connell and Lynott (2009)
Results
How quickly did people read the colour?
- Always quick to say “brown” no matter what (typical colour)
- Always slow to say “yellow” no matter what (unrelated colour)
- BUT: response to white changed depending on the sentence!
Suggests that the colour we expectsomething to be is automaticallyevoked by language!
- It is part of the concept/ representation in the mind
- But the expectation can be modified in a
non-standard context (though notice that the most common colour overall sticks arounds as well!)
Even if you’re talking about north pole, it’s quite typical to say the word brown because this is a typical colour for bears
White depends on the context
What is the way we think shaped by?
Our physically embodied experience
— Language is connected to physical representations and processing centres
— Language is not abstract and modular (i.e. it is not disconnected from experience)
