Intro to Cognitive Science - Unit 3

Question 1

What are the general ideas that enable the categorization of unique stimuli as related to one another?

Answer 1

Concepts (183)

Question 2

What does the classical approach to categorization assume?

Answer 2

That the defining features on a concept are governed by a conjunctive rule stating that every feature must be present for an object to fit the concept: very stringent (184)

Question 3

What is a “rule-governed concept?”

Answer 3

A concept that specifies the features and relations that define membership in the class on an all-or-none basis, like real numbers, gravity, touchdowns, etc. (184)

Question 4

What kind of concepts does the classical approach to categorization assumes applies to all objects?

Answer 4

Rule-governed concepts (184)

Question 5

What is an “object concept?”

Answer 5

Refers to natural objects (biological objects) and artifacts (man-made), often organized hierarchically: like robin, bird, animal (184)

Question 6

What is the contrast between rule-governed and object concepts?

Answer 6

There’s no really defining set of characteristics to help you determine whether an object fits an object concept (184)

Question 7

Can there ever be a fuzzy boundary between concept memberships?

Answer 7

Duh: varying images of cups/glasses/bowls/mugs…. Hunger vs thirst affected view of bowl vs cup (186)

Question 8

What is a “prototype?”

Answer 8

The best or most typical member of a category: important mental representation of the concept; when shifting from it, there’s a gradient away from the prototype; “cover figure” (186)

Question 9

What is the family resemblance structure of object concepts? Who coined this phrase?

Answer 9

When the definitions for a category are a large number of broader features that may not all apply in every case, instead of a smaller set of defining features (188)

Question 10

How can one measure how close or far an object is to the category’s prototype?

Answer 10

By the speed at which they can identify that word as part of the category (188)

Question 11

What is the typicality effect?

Answer 11

The gradient of category membership, or differences in how well specific instances represent a concept (188)

Question 12

Can a concept be coherent even without structural/functional/perceptual similarities?

Answer 12

Yes: things to take out of the house in a fire, for example (188)

Question 13

What did Barton and Komatsu discover about changing internal features or functional features for natural kinds or artifacts?

Answer 13

Changing the internal molecular structure of natural kinds of objects led to different categorization, and changing the functional structure of artifacts led to different categorization: for example, a tire isn’t made of rubber will still be categorized as a tire, but a tire that doesn’t roll will not be (189)

Question 14

What two brain areas are activated when assigning words to concepts?

Answer 14

The VLPFC and the ventral/lateral regions of the posterior temporal cortex (189)

Question 15

Why is there activation in the temporal lobe when assigning words/objects to categories/concepts?

Answer 15

Because the temporal lobe is the end of the “what” visual pathway: each area of the temporal lobe houses a particular concept: for example, the fusiform face gyrus (189)

Question 16

Changes in number but not object identity are registered in the ___, but changes in object identity but not number are registered in the ___.

Answer 16

Intraparietal sulcus, fusiform gyrus in the temporal lobe (190)

Question 17

What is a schema?

Answer 17

A cognitive structure that organizes related concepts and integrates past events (190)

Question 18

What are “frames” in relation to schemas?

Answer 18

Schemas that represent the physical structure of the environment (190)

Question 19

What is the essence of a frame? What does it do?

Answer 19

Gives a detailed structural description of the concepts and relations among concepts that define a given physical environment (191)

Question 20

What are “scripts” in relation to schemas?

Answer 20

Schemas that represent routine activities (191)

Question 21

What is a meta-representation?

Answer 21

A mental representation of another mental representation: allows you to think about another thought (191)

Question 22

What is mindblindness? What is it a characteristic of?

Answer 22

Inability to understand that others have mental representations too: common feature of autism (192)

Question 23

What is an imaginal code?

Answer 23

A concrete means of mental representation that directly conveys perceptual qualities: if perceived visually, then the mental image seems like the original perception (194)

Question 24

What is a propositional code?

Answer 24

An abstract means of mental representation that’s not linked to any sensory modality: represents the features of an object without forming an image, like a bird word map (194)

Question 25

Who pioneered the study of visual images by experimenting with mental rotation?

Answer 25

Shepard et al, 1974, 1983, 1971 (195)

Question 26

Propositional code

Answer 26

An abstract means of mental representation not linked to any sensory modality (194)

Question 27

What did Shepard et al discover about mental rotation?

Answer 27

That the time taken to identify that the rotated image matched the original increased linearly as a function of the angle of rotation, disqualifying the idea of propositional mental representations (197)

Question 28

What did Kosslyn discover about scanning small mental images versus large ones?

Answer 28

It's hard to scan to find features in small mental images (199)

Question 29

What does it mean that mental imagery has an analog aspect?

Answer 29

That the representation's features are analogous/correspond to the features of the object: for example, distance: if two cities are further apart on a map, it takes longer for the brain to mentally draw a straight line between then (199)

Question 30

What is the functional equivalence hypothesis?

Answer 30

Claims that visual imagery uses the same mental representations, processes, and neural structures as does visual perception (199)

Question 31

As found by Farah, 1988, lesions in visual areas affect not only sight, but what else?

Answer 31

Imagery, in accordance with the functional equivalence hypothesis (199)

Question 32

What is a proposition?

Answer 32

An abstract representation that is the smallest unit of knowledge that one can judge to be true or false (202)

Question 33

What is "latent semantic analysis?"

Answer 33

A mathematical procedure for extracting/representing the propositions expressed in the text: allows comparison in terms of propositional content and enables question-answering about the text (203)

Question 34

What is a semantic network model?

Answer 34

The hierarchical structure by which one organizes concepts and their associated features (204)

Question 35

What does the cognitive economy assumption claim?

Answer 35

That each feature of a concept is listed at only one level in the semantic network model: so you don't need to store that a canary can sing and has skin, because skin is already listed under animal, which canary is a part of (204)

Question 36

Which is faster, identity judgments or basic-level categorization?

Answer 36

Identity judgments: easier to say a canary is a canary than a canary is a bird (204)

Question 37

When verifying that a subordinate object is part of basic or superordinate category, which takes longer?

Answer 37

Superordinate: higher up in the semantic network model's hierarchy (204)

Question 38

Which researchers studied the semantic network model of category retrieval, leading to WordNet?

Answer 38

Collins and Quillian, 1969 (204)

Question 39

Do people represent a strict hierarchy of class relations? Who discovered the answer to this?

Answer 39

Rips, Shoben, and Smith (1973) : no, because "collie = mammal" takes longer than "collie = animal" when according to a strict hierarchy, animal is higher than mammal (@06)

Question 40

What did Conrad notice was wrong with Collins' and Quillian's semantic network model of class retrieval?

Answer 40

It's not completely accurate: retrieval depends on how strongly connected a feature is to the object (way faster than expected association between orange = edible) and there aren't differences where there should be (time for bird = move is just as fast as animal = move) (207)

Question 41

What model arose to combat the semantic network model?

Answer 41

The feature comparison model (207)

Question 42

What is the feature comparison model?

Answer 42

The model that claims that characteristic/defining features are assessed and categorized first, and then more defining features are retrieved if necessary (207)

Question 43

What two effects does the feature comparison model explain that the semantic network model does not?

Answer 43

Typicality effect (differences in how well specific instances relate to a concept) and the category size effect (faster identification if object relates to small group than larger) (207)

Question 44

Which research is responsible for the category size effect?

Answer 44

D.E. Meyer, 1970 (207)

Question 45

What is one of the drawbacks to the feature comparison model?

Answer 45

It doesn't explain why false statements with similar concepts (all dogs = cats) take less processing time than "all animals = birds," because dogs vs cats should take two levels or processing (defining+characteristic, then defining) whereas animals vs birds should only take one (defining+characteristic) (208)

Question 46

What are the five assumptions of the classical approach to representation?

Answer 46

Representations are mediating states of intelligent systems that carry info; cognitive systems require some enduring representations; cognitive systems have symbols; some representations are tied to particular perceptual systems, some are amodal; many cognitive functions can be modeled without regard to the particular sensor/effector systems of the cognitive agent (451)

Question 47

What does Barsalou's perceptual symbol system approach propose?

Answer 47

The perceptual system is used to simulate objects and events in order to represent the external world: representing an apple in a bowl = simulating an apple on top of other apples using the perceptual system (451)

Question 48

What does the perceptual approach suggest?

Answer 48

That there aren't just amodal symbols: specific representations derived from perception provide greater flexibility (452)

Question 49

What does the study of situated action assume?

Answer 49

That cognitive processing cannot be extracted from the environment in which it occurs (452)

Question 50

What does change blindness say about situated cognition?

Answer 50

The agent can and does leave out certain information when storing representations: difficult to detect changes of unattended info (452)

Question 51

What aspect of the classical model of representation does the embodied cognition model reject?

Answer 51

The idea that cognitive theories can ignore perceptual/motor systems: it's necessary to build agents that actually interact in real environments (453)

Question 52

What are dynamical systems?

Answer 52

Systems of nonlinear differential equations used to describe aspects of behavior: involve continuous change in values of control variables (WTF? 453)

Question 53

What does the dynamical system approach suggest?

Answer 53

That representations are time-locked to info in the represented world: if the world changes, so does the representation (453)

Question 54

What approach to categorization does Sloutsky propose?

Answer 54

The similarity-based approach: early on, humans use perceptual and attentional mechanisms to detect multiple similarities (246)

Question 55

Why is categorization economical?

Answer 55

It's easier to incorporate many individual entities into a smaller number of classes (246)

Question 56

Why does Sloutsky believe categorization is important?

Answer 56

1) resource efficient; 2) supports organization of knowledge; 3) supports inductive projection (246)

Question 57

What does Sloutsky mean by inductive generalization?

Answer 57

The combined ability of categorization and inductive projection (246)

Question 58

What is the "classical" view of conceptual development?

Answer 58

That first, representations of categories develop arise from accidental features/appearance similarities, but they then evolve into mature representations based on logical rules (246)

Question 59

What view of conceptual development has replaced the "classical" view?

Answer 59

Naïve-theory of knowledge-based (246)

Question 60

What does the naïve-theory/knowledge-based position posit?

Answer 60

mature categorization cannot develop from simpler perceptual components because even for young children, "perceptual features… play a peripheral role in categorization" compared to conceptually central features, and other reasons (247)

Question 61

What are some limitations to the naïve-theory or knowledge-based position of conceptual development?

Answer 61

No origin of conceptual knowledge explained, the explanatory concepts are themselves complex, and the assumptions on which it's based are being disproved (247)

Question 62

What is the central argument of the similarity-based approach?

Answer 62

That "there are multiple correlations in the environment and that humans have perceptual and attentional mechanisms capable of extracting these regularities and establishing correspondences among correlated structures" (247)

Question 63

What did the Gelman and Markman triad experiment demonstrate?

Answer 63

linguistic labels relay conceptual information that is more central than perceptual similarity (247) because: pine-cone-looking "starfish" identified as living in water even though it looked more like a tree-dwelling pinecone

Question 64

Why does it seem that labels gain their weight from an attentional mechanism?

Answer 64

Because peripheral features do in fact affect the centrality of essential features: there aren't fixed roles of central vs peripheral, but rather flexible attentional weight (428)

Question 65

Why is it believed that labels affect inductive generalization thanks to general auditory attentional bias rather than general language attentional bias?

Answer 65

In Sloutsky+Napolitano's study, children were more likely to select the auditory match than the visual match (249)

Question 66

What is perceptual learning?

Answer 66

a process by which some features or stimulus dimensions become more distinct as a result of experience, whereas others become more equivalent (249)

Question 67

What does the evidence from infancy research paradigms suggest about experience with multiple exemplars?

Answer 67

That when presented with multiple exemplars, the perceptual system is directed towards "extracting important category-specific regularities," ie that it becomes better at picking out the similarities in order to distinguish whether novel stimuli belong to a familiar category or not (249)