Knowledge

Question 1

Who proposed the feature comparison model?

Answer 1

Smith et al, 1974

Question 2

In semantic memory, concepts (mental representations of objects/categories) are stored as what?

Answer 2

Lists of defining or characteristic features

Question 3

Describe the main idea of the sentence verification task

Answer 3

Reaction time taken to verify a sentence
Is a carrot (or artichoke) a vegetable?
Carrot quicker to answer as has more characteristic features
Called typicality effect

Question 4

What are two limitations of the feature comparison model?

Answer 4

1. Few concepts can be reduced to list of defining characteristics
2. Features are not independent

Question 5

Who proposed the prototype model?

Answer 5

Rosch, 1973

Question 6

Describe the main ideas of the prototype model

Answer 6

Category membership is not clear cut - prototype models define the “centre” of a category rather than its boundaries
Prototypicality effect (average characteristics, bachelor example)
Categorie have graded structure - some members more representative than others

Question 7

What are the three different levels objects are categorised in, in prototype models?

Answer 7

1. Superordinate (furniture, animal, tool)
2. Basic (chair, dog, hammer)
3. Subordinate (armchair, dalmatian, claw hammer)

Question 8

What are some benefits and limitations of prototype models?

Answer 8

Benefits:
1. can explain a lot of empirical findings
2. allows ‘loose’ concepts to be created
Limitations:
1. prototypes can change with context
2. prototypes ‘lose’ information
3. experts have different prototypes

Question 9

Who proposed the Exemplar model?

Answer 9

Nosofsky, 1991

Question 10

What is the key idea of the exemplar model?

Answer 10

Specific examples rather than ‘averaged’ prototypes drive the typicality effects - easy to find specific memories of common objects compared to uncommon ones

Question 11

What are some benefits and limitations of exemplar models?

Answer 11

Benefits:
1. Don’t require abstraction
2. preserve info about variability
Limitations
1. applies to complex more than simple categories
2. infers that we store every single example of a category

Question 12

Who proposed the idea of hierarchical nets?

Answer 12

Collins & Quillian, 1969

Question 13

What are the key concepts of hierarchical nets?

Answer 13

Concepts represented by nodes
nodes connected by links
semantic relatedness

Question 14

Who proposed the idea of semantic nets?

Answer 14

Collins & Loftus, 1975

Question 15

What are the key concepts of semantic nets?

Answer 15

Semantic distance
Spreading activation
Link strength or weight
More likely to misremember something being in a memory when networks linked to it are activated

Question 16

What are the key concepts of the Adaptive Control of Thought - Rational model (Anderson, 1983, 2000)

Answer 16

Theory of all cognition
Attention/Visual Cognition/Memory/Action
Declarative memory is one small part
DM consists of propositions - smallest unit of information that can be declared true or false
Number of links that can be supported is limited by the strength of the concept

Question 17

What is the fan effect? (Adaptive Control of Thought)

Answer 17

Time to make true/false decisions increases with the number of items of information associated with the location and person

Question 18

What are the key features of Parallel distributed processing (McClelland and Rumelhart, 1986)

Answer 18

Neuron like nodes connected by links
A Concept is represented by a pattern of acitivy distributed across many nodes
Links have different “weights”
Info processing proceeds in parallel - many patterns of spreading activation may occur at the same time
PDP models allow for spontaneous generalisation and graceful degradation

Question 19

Give an example of spontaneous generalisation

Answer 19

If bitten by one dog, don’t just become scared of that one but all dogs, may mean that one bad experience of minority group means we generalise to whole minority group

Question 20

What is meant by graceful degradation?

Answer 20

If knocked out small link of neurons, still get pattern of activation - may be slightly different but still same result

Question 21

Define the term schema

Answer 21

Generic info about situations/general rules that are typically accurate

Question 22

Define the term script

Answer 22

Structured, ordered sequence of events, can be a prototype, an abstraction

Question 23

Briefly describe a study that showed how schemas can distort memory

Answer 23

Pts spent 35 seconds waiting in office
Recalled typical objects like desk, chair, shelves, filing cabinet
Picnic hamper and wine bottle rarely recalled