Psych 2400 chapter 7 Flashcards
Conceptual development
- understanding who or what
2. understanding where, when, why, and how many
what is cognition ?
- The process that govern how: a. we take in information; b, we organize information; c. we use information.
- in short, the processes that govern how we perceive, attend, remember, decide, judge, solve, communicate and act.
constructive nature of thought
- we tend to think we are rational creatures that make sound decisions based on all the available facts.
- We think that our memory is an accurate record of things that have happened
- However, we are prone to bias that show how thoughts are constructed and how experiences are organized.
Getting to knowledge when needed
- just like dictionaries, encyclopedias, and libraries are organized by use
- our knowledge is organized by its use
- use knowledge to understand new experiences
How concepts organize categories?
categories have graded structure:
- members of a category vary in how good an example (or in how typical) they are of their category
- nonmembers of a category also vary in how good an example of a nonmember they are.
Prototype (better member)
mental image that best incorporates the typical experiences associated with a category.
inferences based on typicality of example
Rips showed that subjects inferred that if the robins on a certain island got a disease, then ducks would
Ad hoc categories
are goal-derived categories are not well-established in memory but are instead created on the fly to meet current needs
how graded structure matters? (Typical vs. Atypical)
1 typical exemplars are identified faster than atypical exemplars.
- typical exemplars are generated more often than atypical exemplars
- typical exemplars are generated more often than atypical exemplars
- typicality of exemplars often having substantial effects on decision making.
graded structure is malleable
- graded structures within categories do not remain stable across situations but shift substantially with context
- graded structures do not reflect invariant properties but instead are highly dependent on constraints inherent in specific situations
- Roth & Shoben (1983): a category’s graded structure can shift as a function of its linguistic context.
acquiring categorical understanding
- we don’t experience the world as isolated moments
2. how we act, what we chose to do and the decisions we make reflect our past experience with the world.
basics
- concept: organize objects, events, qualities, and relations.
- general developmental TREND: more concrete to more abstract; from task specific to task independent
types of categories
- Taxonomic categories: birds, fruit, furniture, vehicles etc.
- Goal-derived categories: are things to eat on a diet, places to vacation, birthday presents, things to pack in a suitcase etc.
Basic level is “special”
- people almost exclusively use basic-level names in free-naming tasks
- quicker to identify basic-level category member as a member of a category
- children learn basic-level concepts sooner than other levels
- basic-level is much more common in adult discourse than names for superordinate categories.
- different cultures tend to use the same basic-level categories, at least for living things.
Evidence of early categories?
- using a habituation procedure many studies have documented early sensitivity to characteristics of basic level categories.
- These tasks show discrimination
- However, older children might not show the same kind of discriminations
- These studies tell us less about categorical knowledge in an adult sense and more about the task specific nature of a developing system of knowledge
