semantic memory Flashcards
what is semantic memory?
Semantic memory is a type of declarative memory encompassing general knowledge about the world, concepts and language.
why categorize things in memory?
- reduces complexity of the environment
- allows us to establish hierarchies of objects
- allows us to reorganise
what are the types of natural categories?
- global (superordinate)
- basic
- specific (subordinate)
what is a superordinate level?
highest level of abstraction, consisting of general categories
what is the subordinate level?
lowest level of abstraction, consisting of specific objects
what is the basic level of categories?
exsists between two extremes, aquired by children first
what is typicality?
refers to the difference in how well member relate to their category
what is the prototype view?
The Prototype View explains why some members of a category are seen as better examples than others.
what is the exemplar approach?
looks at how humans categorise and compare the new example to stored examples
how is it similar to the prototype view?
they both represent a category and not define it
what is a knowledge based view?
It emphasizes that concepts do not occur in isolation, but always stand in relations to other concepts and to our general knowledge of the world.
what is spreading activation?
when the node is activated, activated spreads out along all connected links
what is latent semantic analysis LSA?
Computational method for extracting word and passage relations from ‘bags of words’.
