organization in semantic memory

Question 1

How is knowledge represented and organized in semantic memory?
3 Models…

Answer 1

Hierarchical Network Model (Collins & Quillian, 1969)
Spreading Activation Model (Collins & Loftus, 1975)
Feature comparison model (Smith et al., 1974)

Question 2

Knowledge is…

Answer 2

information about the world that is stored in memory, ranging from the everyday to the formal.

Question 3

Knowledge enables …………….., the ability to establish that a perceived entity belongs to a particular group of things that share key characteristics.

Answer 3

categorization

Question 4

An early approach to knowledge representation centred on the idea of….

Answer 4

defining attributes (features).

Question 5

objects can be grouped together in terms of certain attributes (features) that are common to all of them in order to form a concept.
what is this idea centered on?

Answer 5

defining attributes (features).

Question 6

who put forward a hierarchical network model of how concepts are represented by grouping defining features.

Answer 6

Collins and Quillian (1969)

Question 7

Semantic memory is organized into series of hierarchical networks:

Answer 7

concepts that are connected with each other in a web-like form.

Question 8

The Hierarchical network model (Collins & Quillian, 1969) is an example of what network representation, and what are the three heirarchies>

Answer 8

semantic network representation.

Superordinate
Subordinate
Sub-subordinate

Question 9

Hierarchical network model

Nodes:

Answer 9

correspond to concepts (mental representations of objects, events and ideas)

Question 10

Hierarchical network model

links:

Answer 10

correspond to relations among concepts and properties of concepts

Question 11

Hierarchical network model

hierarchy:

Answer 11

general concepts at top and specific concepts at bottom

Question 12

Hierarchical network model

The relationship between the hierarchical levels:
superordinate:
subordinate:
coordinate:

Answer 12

superordinate: at a higher level in the hierarchy
subordinate: at a lower level in the hierarchy
coordinate: at the same level in the hierarchy

Question 13

Hierarchical network model

propositional links:

property links:

Answer 13

propositional links: specify superordinate-subordinate relations among concepts (“is a”).

property links: specify properties of concepts, including “has” and “can”.

Question 14

Hierarchical network model

cognitive economy:

Answer 14

cognitive economy: properties are stored only once at the highest possible node; nodes inherit the properties of superordinate nodes

Question 15

Hierarchical network model

Nodes (concepts):

Answer 15

living thing, plant, animal, tree, bird, etc.

Question 16

Hierarchical network model

Links (propositional):

Answer 16

‘is a’ – Links (property): has skin, can swim, etc.

Question 17

Hierarchical network model

How to test the model?

Answer 17

Sentence verification task:
Participants are presented with statements about concepts or properties
- A canary is yellow (True)
- A canary can fly (True)
- A whale is a fish (False)
Participants report as fast as possible whether the statements are true or false.

Question 18

Problems with the hierarchical network model:

Answer 18

Familiarity: Controlling for familiarity greatly reduces the hierarchical distance effect.
E.g., longer to verify “ A chicken is a bird” than “ A chicken is an animal”.

Typicality effect: Verification is faster for more representative member categories, independent of hierarchical distance (Rips, Shoben, & Smith, 1973).A robin is a bird” is faster to verify than “An ostrich is a bird”.

Question 19

Computed production frequency

Conrad (1972)

Answer 19

i.e., how often participants reported a property when probed with an instance name (e.g., how often ‘curly tail’ is produced when probed with ‘pig’).

Question 20

Hierarchical network model can provide….

Answer 20

straightforward predictions towards response times in sentence verification tasks.

Question 21

Hierarchical network model

The model failed to predict how people

Answer 21

performed in certain sentence verification tasks, especially the familiarity and typicality effects.

Question 22

Spreading Activation Model (Collins & Loftus, 1975)

Assumes semantic memory is organized by semantic relatedness:

Answer 22

web of interconnected nodes (concepts) rather than a network of hierarchy.
Links between units of information can vary in length: more strongly associated (similar) concepts are connected via shorter links.
Shorter response times to shorter links.

Question 23

Spreading activation model

The length of the link between two concepts can….

Answer 23

define their relatedness.

Question 24

Spreading activation model

Spreading activation:

Answer 24

A node is activated when one thinks of a concept.

Activation spreads to related concepts.

Spreading activation decreases as the distance from the original node is increased.

Spreading activation can account for the priming effect.

Question 25

Spreading activation model

Answer 25

Semantic priming: A semantically-related word facilitates the processing/identification of a target word.

Question 26

Spreading activation model

Lexical decision task (Meyer & Schvaneveldt, 1971):

Answer 26

Participants are presented with a pair of words

Question 27

The spreading activation model is more flexible than the hierarchical network model.
tue or false

Answer 27

true

Question 28

The spreading activation model can account for more….

Answer 28

empirical findings (typicality effect, priming effect).

Question 29

spreading activation model

The flexibility also reduces the specificity of

Answer 29

of the model’s predictions, making the spreading activation model more difficult to test.

Question 30

Feature comparison model (Smith et al., 1974)

Concepts are represented as lists of features:

Answer 30

defining features and characteristic features

Question 31

A defining feature is

Answer 31

one possessed by all members of a category (e.g. all birds have feathers).

Question 32

Characteristic features are

Answer 32

are attributes possessed by most members of a category (e.g., Birds can fly).

Question 33

Feature comparison model (Smith et al., 1974)

Problems:

Answer 33

The model explains how we verify statements but does not account for how we extract the meaning of what we see or hear.
“a canary is a bird” and “a bird is a canary” would both be verified as they yield the same feature overlap. But “a bird is a canary” is not true!
The model cannot explain how we verify statements involving concepts that have no featural overlap, e.g. “the man has a brick”.

Question 34

Hierarchical network model (Collins & Quillian, 1969)

summarise

Answer 34

Accounts for most of sentence verification task results

Fails to predict typicality and familiarity effects

Question 35

Spreading Activation Model (Collins & Loftus, 1975)

summarise

Answer 35

Explains typicality and priming effects

Difficult to test due to great level of flexibility of the model

Question 36

Feature comparison model (Smith et al., 1974)

summarise

Answer 36

Limited to verifying certain statements and does not offer a general theory of how meaning is represented.