Knowledge And Imagery Flashcards
knowledge that enables us to recognize objects and events, and to make inferences about their properties (kind of like what we expect)
conceptual knowledge
Mental representation that is used for a variety of cognitive functions
concept
Includes all possible examples of a particular concept
Categories
The process by which things are placed into groups called categories
categorization
Categories help us deal with _______ information.
novel information is dealt with through _________ (1)
(Think placeholders, labels)
A wealth of general information about items or all possible examples of a particular concept that allows us to identify special characteristics and properties
Categories
Categories are like
schemas are like
Determining category membership based on whether the object meets the EXACT definition of the category
The definitional approach
(Which is quite inflexible and can be problematic; think 4 legged chair example; but there are chairs that don’t have 4 legs)
A way of determining category membership based on the idea that things in a category resemble one another in a number of ways, allowing some variation within a category.
Family resemblance
The family resemblance approach can be contrasted with the
The definitional approach can be contrasted with the
An AVERAGED/average representation of the typical member of a category; does not reference to one specific real thing in the world, general concept
prototypes
Prototype of a bird would include characteristic features like
wings, beak, ability to fly, etc,
Rosch Categorization Experiment
- participants judged objects on a scale of 1 (good example of a category or the prototype) to 7 (poor example)
- eg: category - birds: sparrow - 1.2; bat - 6.2
High-prototypicality is when a category member
closely resembles the category prototype
Low-prototypicality
Category does not resemble category prototype
Prototypicality and familiy resemblances are categorization approaches that have a strong _________ relationship
positive - things very prototypical of a category tend to have a high degree of family resemblance with other things in that category and vie versa
Low overlap = low family resemblance =
low prototypicailty
Prototypical objects are preferentially processed. This is called the ___________ (2) in which more prototypical members of a category tend to be named first
Typicality effect
(Highly prototypical objects are named first and categorized more rapidly)
Rosch Prototype Approach findings:
- prototypical category members are more affected by a priming stimulus
- Hearing the word green primed people to think of the “good example” grass green rather than the less common pale green
Rosch Prototype approach process:
- get participants to identify whether the colours are the same - yes or no
- Same colour: good example
- Same colour: poor example
- Different colour
Then prime.
(priming stimulus helps people think of more prototypical stimulus)
People react rapidly to members of a category that are “typical” of the category
typicality
Rosch’s Prototype Approach Priming Experiment Tests for _______ through ________.
Typicality
Priming
Effects of Prototypicallity (4)
- Family Resemblance
- Typicality
- Naming
- Priming
people are more likely to list some objects than others when asked to name objects in a category
Naming (effect of prototypicality)
Presentation of one stimulus affects responses to a stimulus that follows.
Priming (effect of prototypicality)
approach to categorization that involves concepts that are represented by multiple REAL examples
exemplar approach
Eg: cats - Jewels, Reggie, Gandalf - real cats
Exemplar approach vs. Prototype approach
Representing concepts through actual category members vs. Abstract averages
specific, real, definite example of a category
Exemplar
The exemplar approach can be invoked to explain the ___________ effect.
typicality effect
- objects that are like more of the exemplars are classified faster
Objects that are closer to the prototypes or exemplars of a category are classified faster. This is called the: (2)
typicality effect
________ may work best earlier on in learning or for larger categories
Prototypes
- storing large numbers of exemplars can become daunting -> prototypes make the learning process more efficient by averaging a small number of exemplars
__________ may work best later on in learning when expertise is developed, or for smaller more specific categories
exemplars
- can easily take into account atypical cases and deal with variable categories
- easier to keep track of small number of exemplars
To understand how people categorize objects you need to consider the _______ of objects and how they become ________ through learning and experience
Properties
Integrated
Mechanism for organizing the relationships between properties and particular categories (from general to specific)
Hierarchical organization
3 levels of hierarchical organizing (from top to bottom) with example:
(General to specific):
- Global (superordinate)
- Basic
- Specific (subordinate)
Cats - global / superordinate
Pet Cats - basic
Jewels My Pet Cat - specific / subordinate
Rosch Hierarchical Organization RULES FOUND (in which the basic level in the middle strikes a good balance):
- going ABOVE the basic level to the superordinate/global level results in a LOSS of information
- up = loss of info - going below the basic level to the subordinate/specific level results in a slight GAIN of information
- down = gain of info
Rosch Hierarchical organization findings:
when asked to name pictures of various objects, participants tended to use basic level labels - eg: when shown a pic of a guitar people didn’t use “musical instrument” (general superordinate level) to name it, they used “guitar” (basic level)
Level of Organization - think red guitar like you saw on the thing:
Superordinate global level: musical instrument (lose some info going from guitar to musical instrument bc more general)
Basic level: guitar
Subordinate specific level: electric guitar (gain some info going from guitar to electric guitar because more specific)
Effects of Expertise on Hierarchical Organization
Experts used more specific / subordinate category levels to name the objects while novices used basic levels.
Expertise can affect ________ and ________ as shown in Rosch’s Hierarchical Organization naming experiment; experts used more specific subordinate level categories while novices/common people used basic level categories
cognition and categorization
The idea that concepts are arranged in networks which represents how concepts are organized in the mind. These networks are known as:
semantic networks
part of semantic network that represent categories and concepts
(other concepts branch off from these categories)
Nodes
Categories and concepts are represented by _______ in semantic networks
nodes
Related concepts in semantic networks are
linked
model for how concepts and properties are associated in the mind
semantic networks
(mind maps!)
inheritance (semantic networks)
the convention or rule that lower-level items share properties of higher-level items (think family resemblance)
Shared properties are only stored at higher-level nodes while exceptions are stored at lower nodes. This is an example of the convention of ________ in semantic networks.
inheritance
- lower-level items in semantic networks share properties of higher level items (branching off; family resemblance low key)
- shared properties are only stored at higher nodes
- exceptions/rare/specific cases are stored at lower nodes
This is the concept/convention/rule of:
inheritance
Efficient mental organization of concepts is known as __________ (2):
cognitive economy
Semantic distance in networks predicts response time for related _______.
decisions
Concept within networks that predicts response time for related decisions
Semantic distance
How closely concepts in semantic networks are connected - closer concepts need less reaction time to identify while further concepts take more reaction time to identify (…..those are connected but thats a stretch…)
Semantic distance
Arousal level of a node in a semantic network: __________.
When a node is activated, activity SPREADS out along ALL connected LINKS: __________. Eg:
activation
Spreading activation
Eg: being primed with “robin” gets you to the node “bird” which is connects to animals and other species of birds
Concepts that receive activation are _______ and more easily accessed from memory.
primed
Concepts that are primed (received activation) are known as: ___________ (2).
Girded Concepts
Participants read stimuli and are asked to make a judgement as quickly as possible (eg: is the item part of insert category or not?)
This is know as the ________ (2) task.
Lexical decision task
In the lexical decision task, the more closely associated the pair of words was, the faster the reaction time for those pairs. This could be due to ___________ (2).
spreading activation
Semantic networks CANNOT explain ____________ (2).
typicality effects
Are these word pairs related or not experiment: (3)
How people figure out if words are connected or not (using semantic/mind networks): (2)
lexical decision task
spreading activation
Good cognitive economy means good and _______ mental ________.
Good ________ means good and efficient mental organization
The Category specific memory impairment, brain damaged participants were:
able to identify non-animals but not able to identify animals.
A distinction between categorization ability based on sensory features vs. function. The inability to only do sensory categorization or only function categorization is called (4):
Category-specific memory impairment
Category specific memory impairment aligns with the ____________ (2) hypothesis.
sensory - functional
We categorize living things and artifacts based on a memory system that categorizes sensory attributes and function.
This hypothesis is known as: __________ (2) hypothesis.
Living things - sensory qualities
Artifacts (non-living) - functional qualities
In Warrington and Shallice’s study, both participants with brain damage could identify artifacts but NOT living things, meaning their functional processing worked while their sensory processing did not
sensory functional hypothesis
sensory processing is for identifying
living things
Functional processing is for identifying
artifacts, non-living things
The hypothesis assuming that things can be categorized along many different dimensions:
Multiple factors hypothesis
Sensory dimensions used to identify animals (multiple factors hypothesis):
colour and motion
When DIFFERENT CONCEPTS within a category SHARE many of the SAME PROPERTIES
- eg: animals all share eyes, legs, movement
Crowding
_______ makes it more difficult for some people to categorize when there is a lot of “interference” due to overlap in shared features rather than a category specific deficit (sensory-function hypothesis)
Crowding
Hypothesis proposing there are some specific neural circuits in the brain that underlie the processing of objects from certain categories
- specialized neural circuits
Semantic categories hypothesis
distributive representation is a concept that works within the ____________ (2) hypothesis
semantic categories
“Areas within the semantic system represent information about specific semantic domains/groups of related concepts and our cortex map shows which domains are represented in each area.”
(Basically different areas of brain for different functions)
This is known as the:
semantic categories hypothesis
Our knowledge of concepts is based on REACTIVATION of sensory and motor codes that occur when we interact with or think about an object.
“ OMG THIS REMINDS ME OF SOMETHING”
embodiment hypothesis
the __________ hypothesis in which knowledge is brought to mind through sensory and motor codes that occur when we interact with something relating to the knowledge, may involve __________ neurons
embodiment hypothesis
mirror neurons
correspondence between words related to specific body parts and the brain location that gets activated when they’re processed
Leg words get processed in a special place!
OMG HEART WORDS GET PROCESSED IN A SPECIAL PLACE THEN TOO
SEX MOVEMENTS GET PROCESSED IN A DIFFERENT PLACEJKdhkl;s
Semantic somatotopy
(Mind, body)
(Semantic, soma)
Experience it a sensory (any of the five senses) impression in the absence of physical stimuli
mental imagery
accessing visual representations without any accompanying sensory input/visual stimuli
Visual imagery
(Mind’s eye!)
Is imagery necessary for thought?
imageless thought debate
Aristotle said thought is impossible without an image (bruh).
Galton said people who can’t produce imagery don’t seem to have a problem thinking and functioning lol.
What do pure behaviourists think of imagery?
mythological can’t access tangible how do we know
_________ (2) can enhance performance and other kinds of representations which can have implications for memory.
- allows us to simulate things we are interested in without us being there and doing them
- mind wandering, imagination
Visual imagery
Imagery -> not tangible, need to develop reliable methods to ensure behaviour can be used to infer cognitive processes
memory advantage for _________ nouns over _________ nouns
concrete nouns (house, car, spoon)
abstract nouns (love, war, depression)
Paivios experiment with concrete nouns being more memorable than abstract nouns suggested that:
people can relate to concrete words more because they can imagine them which then affects memory
- imagery having observable effects on memory
Study list of paired items and then generate a picture associated with paired items in an image condition (not paired images is the controlled variable)
This study is called the: (3)
Paired-Associate paradigm
Concrete nouns create images that other words can “hang onto” which enhances memory
This is known as the _________ (2) hypothesis.
conceptual-peg hypothesis
the conceptual-peg hypothesis in which concrete nouns create images that other words can work from to enhance memory, is related to the ________ (2) theory.
Conceptual-peg hypothesis: link items to the “pegs” of one is sun, two is shoe, and three is tree to create vivid imagery/strong mental associations making the items easier to recall
dual-coding theory
We process and store information in what two ways in the dual coding theory?
- Verbal System (words and language; reading and hearing)
- Visual System (images and mental pictures; seeing or imagining)
Imagery can involve spatial representation. This was shown through which task?
Mental Rotation Task
Mental chronometry
Mental chronometry unit
using reaction time in perceptual/motor tasks to infer cognitive processes involved in a judgement
reaction time
The way imagery and real vision has been proved to possibly share some properties and mechanisms (mind’s eye), is proved by the _________ which measures mental chronometry or reaction time
Mental Rotation Task
__________ and _________ ‘s (1971) results imply that imagery can involve ________ representation of a stimulus (the ______ layout of the actual stimulus matches the ________ layout of the associated mental representation
Shepard and Meltzer
spatial
_____________ (2) experiments involves asking participants to create mental images and then “____” or explore them in their mind.
mental scanning
scan
Kosslyn’s ____________ (2) experiments asked participants to memorize a picture and then find a specific part of the picture within their own internal representation, and were asked to press a button once they’ve “found” it in their head. The hypothesis was that like in real life, it would take longer for participants to mentally travel between locations that are farther apart. This was confirmed by the data collected. However, Lea suggested that a possible alternative explanation for those results was that there more distractions when scanning longer distances may have increased reaction time (interesting things in between mental point A and B so you stop and get distracted like oh a butterfly!)
mental scanning
Kosslyn’s _________ (2) experiments suggest that visual imagery can be spatial in nature, and that ________ and ________ can work from similar mechanisms (took participants a longer time to mentally travel between locations that were farther apart, like it would take longer to travel irl)
mental scanning
imagery and perception
mental scanning experiments tended to use ______ and images for the participants to memorize
maps
there is evidence that people tend to encode things ________ in STM/WM.
phonologically
the _________ (2) theory predicts that encoding using both semantics and imagery leads to better memory
dual-coding theory
People encode semantically, phonologically, with imagery, etc. What form do imagistic representations take? Is imagery based on spatial mechanisms (similar to those associated with perception) or propositional mechanisms (similar to those associated with language). This debate is called the ____________ (2).
imagery debate
Is Imagery Spatial or Propositional? This question is known as the ________ (2).
imagery debate
A secondary phenomenon accompanying another one but does not cause anything, and is not causally related to it.
- Mental events are caused by or are byproducts of physical events in the brain, but do not cause physical events
epiphenomenon
2 underlying representations in imagery:
propositional
spatial / depictive
propositional representation example of imagery:
Someone tells you “Jewels is snuggling in the bed.”
What imagery do you have?
the literal words “Jewels is snuggling in the bed.” Appear in your head
__________ examples of representations in imagery are language and symbols
Propositional
__________ or _________examples of imagery would be thinking of a realistic picture in your mind’s eye
depictive
spatial
“Jewels is snuggling on the bed.”
Depictive (spatial) representation example:
I imagine or see a pretty realistic picture of jewels curled up on the pink and white blanket in my bed being very cute and fluffy and peaceful in the warm lighting of my bedroom.
The __________ (3) is used to explain Kosslyn’s mental scanning results by suggesting that participants used real-world knowledge unconsciously - if point A is farther from B than to point C, they will take longer to mentally travel from A to B than from A to C.
tacit-knowledge explanation
mental scanning and imagery can reflect representations that are propositional in nature -> letters and symbols can be used to represent imagery; this can be related to the idea of ________ distance
semantic
Task in which you approach mental representation of an object from a distance and continue until it fills your entire visual field (overflow)
mental-walk task
When you’re doing the mental-walk task and you’re at the point where you’re imagining the object so close that it fills your entire visual field. This is known as:
overflow
Overall, imagery can have properties or mechanisms that overlap with ________ perception
spatial
when doing the mental-walk task, for overflow to occur, participants estimated having to mentally move closer to ________ animals as compared to ________ ones to produce overflow
- eg:
Smaller
larger
- eg: have to get super close to a small object for it to fill your own visual field (like my eraser); don’t have to be too close for a very large object (like a building) for it to fill your whole visual field
during the mental-walk task, when participants were asked to recall details about a large object and a relatively small object, participants were quicker to answer questions about details for the _______ object
large
Imagery can exert priming effects as shown by the experiment in which people more accurately determined which box a letter was shown in, when they coincidentally imaged the letter in that specific box prior to the letters being shown. This experiment is known as the ____________ (2) experiment
letter visualization experiment
The medial temporal lobe includes the __________ and the _________
hippocampus
amygdala
neurons that respond to perceiving and imagining particular objects - (eg: when seeing or imagining a baseball, though not when seeing/imaging a face)
- like feature detectors for specific objects that can be imagined
- shows overlap of brain activation in visual cortex between perceiving and imagining
imagery neurons
Specific neurons fire when you perceive AND imagine a rose in your head. These are called _________ neurons.
imagery neurons
similar changes in BOLD signal or ___________ (4) signal when alternating between direct perception AND imagining a stimulus; similar changes in brain in overall activation (imagery neurons firing for both direct perception and imagining)
Blood Oxygen Level Dependent (signal; MRI)
- looking at and imagining small objects gets brain activation in the ______ of the visual cortex
- while looking at and imagining large objects gets brain activation at the ______ of the visual cortex
small - back of visual cortex activated
large - front of visual cortex activated
Using fMRI, Ganis et. al (2004) found a greater overlap of activation by perception and imagery in the ________ lobe rather than the occipital lobe
FRONTAL LOBE
- perception and imagery overlap
One of the two conditions of the multi-voxel-pattern-analysis (MVPA) in which the researchers guessed 63% accurately in which scene the participant was directly perceiving/viewing based on their brain activity. This condition is known as: (3)
direct perception prediction
One of the two conditions of the multi-voxel-pattern-analysis (MVPA) in which researchers were 55% accurate in guessing what scene a participant was imagining based on their brain activity. This condition is called: (2)
imagery prediction
ability to imagine visual details, features, or objects (eg: a cup on the moon)
object imagery
Ability to imagine spatial relations (eg: blueprints of a house)
spatial imagery
Questionnaire designed to measure object imagery - classifies people as visualizers or verbalizers
Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ)
Test measuring object imagery:
Test measuring spatial imagery:
Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ)
Paper folding test (PFT)
