Conceptual Knowledge Flashcards
Define ‘conceptual knowledge’
Knowledge that enables people to recognize objects and events and to make inferences about their properties
Conceptual knowledge exists in the form of…
concepts
Concepts
A mental representation of a class or individual, also the meaning of objects, events, and ideas.
What is a way in which we organize concepts?
Categories
Categories
Groups of objects that belong together
Definitional approach to categorization
We decide whether something is a member of a category by determining whether the object meets the definition of the category
Family resemblance
Things in a particular category resemble one another in a number of ways. This approach allows for variation
Prototype approach
We decide whether something is a member of a category by determining whether it is similar to a typical representation of the category “prototype”
High typicality
A category member closely resembles the category prototype
Low typicality
A category member does not closely resemble a typical member of the category
Prototypical objects have high family resemblance because…
their characteristics have a large amount of overlap
Typicality effect
Ability to judge highly prototypical objects more rapidly
Differentiate between the exemplar approach and prototype approach
The prototype approach uses a typical member to compare to and the exemplar approach uses many examples
Rosch distinguished three levels of categories…
1) the superordinate level
2) the basic level
3) the subordinate level
The superordinate level
Most general category level aka global level
Ex; furniture
The basic level
Psychologically special because it is the level above which most information is lost and below which little is gained
Ex; table
The subordinate level
Most specific category level aka specific level
Ex; kitchen table
We often assign objects _____ level names.
basic
Semantic network approach
Understanding how concepts are organized in the mind by proposing that concepts are arranged in networks
Collin and Quillian’s Hierarchical Model
Specific concepts are at the bottom and more general are at the top.
Cognitive economy
A feature of some semantic network models in which properties of a category that are shared by many members of a category are stored at a higher (more general) level node in the network
Example of cognitive economy: The property “can fly” would be stored at the node for bird rather than at the node for “canary”. Why is this?
Including “can fly” at the node for every bird would take up too much storage space. Makes the network more efficient
The hierarchical model verifies the sentence verification technique that…
it should take longer to answer “yes” to the statement “A canary is an animal” than to “A Canary is a bird” because greater distance results in longer reaction time
Spreading activation
Activity that spreads out along any link in a semantic network that is connected to an activated node
