Module 9 - Knowledge Flashcards
What is conceptual knowledge?
Conceptual knowledge is knowledge that enables people to recognise objects and events and to make inferences about their properties. It provides rules for creating categories.
What is categorization? Why are categories useful?
Categorization is the process by which things are placed in categories.
Categories are useful because they:
● Provide a lot of information about items within a category.
● Help us understand the environment.
● Enable us to take action.
● Help us understand the behaviours of others
What is the prototype approach to categorization?
The prototype approach to categorization states that membership in a category is determined by comparing the object to a prototype that represents the category.
What is a prototype? What is typicality?
A prototype is a typical member of a category. It is based on an average representation of members of a category.
Objects within a category can vary in typicality. High typicality means the member closely resembles the prototype. Low typicality means the member loosely resembles the prototype
What is family resemblance?
Family resemblance is the idea that things in a category resemble one another in a number of ways. This idea solves the problem that definitions often don’t include all members of a category. Items with high family resemblance are more likely to be judged to be good members of the category.
What is the sentence verification technique? What is the typicality effect?
The sentence verification technique asks participants if they think a statement is true or false.
The typicality effect is the finding that people are faster to verify statements about items that are more typical of a category (for example, verifying that an apple is a fruit is faster than verifying that a pomegranate is a fruit).
How does priming affect prototypical objects?
In a priming experiment, Rosch found that participants were faster to make “same” judgements for colours that were prototypical of the colour category (for example, good examples of green) than for non-prototypical colours. This suggests that hearing the name of the colour activated a mental representation of the colour, and that this representation was more strongly activated for prototypical colours.
What is the exemplar approach to categorization?
The exemplar approach to categorization states that membership in a category is determined by comparing the object to exemplars, which are actual members of a category that a person has encountered in the past. This approach explains the typicality effect by proposing that objects that are more like exemplars are classified faster.
Describe the three levels of categories in a hierarchical organization.
Hierarchical organisation is the organization of larger, more general categories that are divided into smaller, more specific categories. The three levels of categories are:
1. Superordinate level/Global level: The most general level of categorisation (for example, furniture).
2. Basic level: The level of categorisation below the superordinate level (for example, chair).
3. Subordinate level/Specific level: The most specific level of categorisation (for example, kitchen chair).
What is the semantic network approach?
The semantic network approach proposes that concepts are arranged in networks.
What is cognitive economy?
Cognitive economy is a way of storing shared properties just once at a higher-level node. This makes the network more efficient. However, it can create problems when not all members of a category share a property. In these cases, exceptions are added at lower nodes.
What is spreading activation?
Spreading activation is activity that spreads out along any link that is connected to an activated node. This can result in additional concepts becoming primed, making them easier to retrieve from memory.
How does the lexical decision task provide evidence for spreading activation?
In the lexical decision task, participants are asked to decide as quickly as possible whether a string of letters is a word or a non-word. Participants respond faster when two words are associated, suggesting that activation has spread from one word to the other.
What is the connectionist approach? What is parallel distributed processing (PDP)?
The connectionist approach is a model of how concepts are represented in the brain that is inspired by how information is represented in the brain. Connectionist models are sometimes called parallel distributed processing (PDP) models because they propose that concepts are represented by activity that is distributed across a network.
How are concepts represented in a connectionist network?
In a connectionist network, concepts are represented by a pattern of activity across the network’s units. Incoming stimuli activate input units, which send signals to hidden units. Hidden units then send signals to output units. Connection weights determine how strongly signals are passed from one unit to the next.