concepts and semantic memory 5 Flashcards
what is general knowledge?
- culturally valued knowledge communicated by a range of non-specialist media and encompassing a wide subject range
- thought to be an important component of crystallized intelligence and strongly associated with general intelligence and openness to experience
- stored in semantic memory
- important for making sense of the world and for learning new info
- substantial amount of general knowledge relates to knowledge of language- words and concepts
what is semantic memory?
- general knowledge like ‘paris is the capital of france’
- knowledge about language and words, an average adult will know up to 50,000 words as well as lots of info about what each word means
- other conceptual knowledge - a bicycle has wheels
- all this info needs to be organised in some way in order to allow us to process info deeply and to search efficiently
- lots of general knowledge is about individual elements, like dogs or cars. using the idea of concepts and categories is a way that we can organise info
what is a category?
a set of objects that belong together, birds, dogs, fruits
what is a concept?
a mental representation of a category of objects, typically derived from experience
- it comes from experience, that we learn over time
- useful
- an effiecient way of representing our knowledge of the world and help us focus on the similarities among objects
- allow us to make predictions of the world
- can also use concepts in communication to convey info about ourselves and the world, but there can be individual differences in beleifs about category membership
how do we define concepts?
- how do we categorize things
- initial explanations of concepts relied on the notion of ‘essential, common features’
- e.g. dogs have fur paws, tails, they bark
- essentially the concept of a dog is an answer to the question, what is a dog?
- your answer is your concept of a dog
- all dogs go into category of ‘dogs’
why is how we define concepts problematic?
- some concepts defy definition in this way
- for example- wittgenstein - language games- To understand the concept, you have to be a part of the game to understand. defining, ‘sports’ or ‘games’
- some concepts have fuzzy boundaries- they cross over, such as pumpkins and tomatoes- defining them by essential features is not really workable
- membership of a category is gradual rather than an all or nothing issue
what did rosch, mervis and hampton suggest about prototype model?
- a prototype is an abstract idealised representation of the category member
- based on the average of members commonly experienced, e.g. robin, sparrow, starling
- it is like many members but it is not exactly like any of them
- there are characteristic features, they are not necessary but they are commonly present for many members of the category
- items in any given category differ in their prototypicality- robin vs penguin
-Not all birds resemble the prototype- emu, ostrich- they are atypical- these differences are described by Rosch as typicality ratings. robin high typicality, emu low typicality
-supported the notion of gradual category membership
what is the prototype approach?
- allows for fuzzy boundaries- if
an object shares only a few features
with the prototype then it likely shares features with another prototype –e.g. dolphins are fish (they are not, of
course) - people offer typical features rather than essential features- e.g. of a bird, it flies, but not all fly= prototypical characteristics – supporting evidence for this
- statements about prototypical objects are rapidly verified- a robin is a bird is verified quicly, but a penguin is a bird is not
this is the TYPICALITY EFFECT
what is family resemblance?
-an object can be classified as belonging to a category when there is a match between it and the prototype
- members sharing attributes
-The more they share, the greater the family resemblance.
-Yet some categories show little family resemblance- goal derived categories, e.g. things to take on holiday (sunblock, goggles, shorts, phone charger, book)- yet they are still grouped together.
-Barsalou- people can categorize things into newly defined categories- even though this has no prototype to use for comparison
-Hamilton – things are difficult to produce a prototype for e.g., justice, love
what is the friendship prototype?
fehr- found that there is a prototype for ‘friendship intimacy’ in same sex friendships
prototypical features of friendship intimacy:
- self disclosure
-emotional support
- loyalty
less prototypical features:
- shared activities
- practical support
what is the exemplar approach?
we make category judgements by comparing new stimuli with instances already stored in memory= ‘exemplars’
- new exemplars are compared with known exemplars- most similar item will influence classification the most
-More able to account for tricky categories like ‘games’, because actual exemplars, not
prototypes are used, and atypical examples do not get ‘lost’ in an ‘average’
-Accounts for typicality: objects that are classified faster are like more of the stored
exemplars
- Prototypes and exemplars may be combined and vary on their level of ‘abstraction’
what is the knowledge based approach?
in addition to knowledge of concepts features/attributes we also have understanding of the relationship between features/ attributes
e.g. an axe is dangerous because of the sharp blade and that is important
- our knowledge of concepts is also influenced by these relationships, not just our knowledge of its attributes, and this has been shown to impact whether objects belong to certain categories
- This is especially the case for causal relationships - i.e. members of a
category have blurred vision, leading to headaches which leads to insomnia - Participants considered those who did not have blurred vision as less likely
category members than those without insomnia because of the causal
relationship – if the cause is missing then category membership drops
what is the situated nature of concepts by barsalou?
representation of any given concept will vary from situation to situation depending on our current goals and important aspects of situation
we need to focus on the connections between conceptual, perceptual and motor/action systems
There is reasonable evidence to suggest that we access perceptual / situational and motor / action information when we process concepts, there is more to them than
simply an abstract representation of the concept itself
- Depends on what we are trying to achieve
- Conceptual- what can we see at a particular time
- What can we do in a particular time
- Focus on connections
what is the embodiment of concepts example?
- We now know that tongue, finger and
foot movements produce different
patterns of activation in the motor
cortex - Hauk et al. (2004) presented
participants with words such as “lick”,
“pick”, “kick” - These words activated parts of motor
cortex that correspond to body part
that would perform the movement - So, activation of the concept causes
activation here too
what is the hierarchy of concepts?
research by Rosch and colleagues
- superordinate level (furniture, animals, tools)
- basic level (table, fly, spanner)
-subordinate level (desk table, pug, phillips spanner)
most of the time we use basic level info about concepts
what is the spreading activation model?
- Collins and Loftus (1975) suggested semantic memory is organised on the basis of semantic relatedness (semantic distance)
- Whenever we see, think or hear something, the appropriate ‘node’ in semantic memory is activated
- This activation spreads strongly to closely related concepts and weakly distanced related concepts
- This explains the typicality effect as it takes less time to decide that a typica member belongs to a category
(e.g.
apple – fruit) than a less typical
member (e.g. kumquat – fruit)
what is a schema?
- a mental structure we use to organize and simplify our knowledge of the world around us
- we have schemas about ourselves, other people, mechanical devices, food
- larger knowledge units than concepts
what are the types of schemas?
- Social schemas are about general
social knowledge. - Person schemas are about individual
people. - Self-schemas are about oneself. We
also hold idealized or projected
selves, or possible selves. - Role schemas are about proper
behaviours in given situations. - Event schemas (or scripts) are about
what happens in specific situations.
what are scripts?
- narrower term than schema- well structured sequence of events associated with a particular activity
-help us to understand everyday events
- e.g.Lecture script: entering the room, finding a seat, sitting down, getting notepad,
listening to lecturer, taking notes, checking time, leaving… - Scripts could interfere with memory by replacing expected events that were
missing from stories. - Social structure encourages a strong degree of behavioural scripts to be
utilized within everyday interactions with others.
what is the influence of schemas in memory?
- Schemas help us to understand situations – we know how to behave in
certain situations because we have a schema for the situation - They allow us to form expectations and make predictions about a situation
- They can influence our memory of an event as we are more likely to notice
things and events that are congruent with a schema - They help us prevent cognitive overload
- BUT… They can cause various errors in memory and perception
what is brewer and treyens memory for objects in a room experiement?
- p’s 30 uni students- asked to wait in an office
-after waiting in office for a while, they were taken out ans asked to write down what they can remember in the room
results
-most p’s recalled schematic objects- desk, pen, chair
- some reported things to be expected in an office but not present- phone, books
-many recalled the skull
what is a stereotype?
- simplified generalizations about groups- a type of shcema
- can influence our social beh and cognitive processing
- peoples accents
when studying stereotypes, explicit measures are not always reliable, influence of social desirability bias- therefore Association test (IAT) has been developed
what is the research into gender schema?
kreiner et al
asked p’s to read sentences and recorded their eye movement
p’s fixated longer on the himself/ herself pronoun for females
what is stereotype stability?
- Research suggests that stereotypes are less stable and invariant over time
than originally thought - Garcia-Marques et al (2006) asked participants to select 5 out of 43 traits
that best describe various groups. Then repeated the same task 2 weeks
later - Results reveal considerable variation between the traits selected in test 1
and test 2, especially for traits that are judged to be less typical - Stereotype activation is flexible and dependent on context
