Visual Object Recognition Flashcards
Concepts
A mental representation of a class or individual. Also, the meaning of objects, events, and abstract ideas. An example of a concept would be the way a person mentally represents “cat” or “house.”
Category
Groups of objects that belong together because they belong to the same class of objects, such as “houses,” “furniture,” or “schools.”
Conceptual knowledge
Knowledge that enables people to recognize objects and events and to make inferences about their properties.
Definitional approach to catergorisation
The idea that we can decide whether something is a member of a category by determining whether the object meets the definition of the category. See also Family resemblance.
Categorisation
The process by which objects are placed in categories.
Family resemblance
In considering the process of categorization, the idea that things in a particular category resemble each other in a number of ways. This approach can be contrasted with the definitional approach, which states that an object belongs to a category only when it meets a definite set of criteria.
Favored by Wittgenstein.
Prototype approach to categorization
The idea that we decide whether something is a member of a category by determining whether it is similar to a standard representation of the category, called a prototype.
Typically effect
The ability to judge the truth or falsity of sentences involving high-prototypical members of a category more rapidly than sentences involving low-prototypical members of a category. See also Sentence verification technique.
Prototype
A standard used in categorization that is formed by averaging the category members a person has encountered in the past.
Sentence verification technique
A technique in which the participant is asked to indicate whether a particular sentence is true or false. For example, sentences like “An apple is a fruit” have been used in studies on categorization.
Exemplar approach to categorization
The approach to categorization in which members of a category are judged against exemplars—examples of members of the category that the person has encountered in the past.
Global level
The highest level in Rosch’s categorization scheme (e.g., “furniture” or “vehicles”).
Exemplars
In categorization, members of a category that a person has experienced in the past.
Basic level
In Rosch’s categorization scheme, the level below the global (superordinate) level (e.g., “table” or “chair” for the superordinate category “furniture”). According to Rosch, the basic level is psychologically special because it is the level above which much information is lost and below which little is gained.
Hierarchical organization
Organization of categories in which larger, more general categories are divided into smaller, more specific categories. These smaller categories can, in turn, be divided into even more specific categories to create a number of levels.
Superordinate level
The most general category level distinguished by Rosch—for example, “furniture.”
Subordinate level
The most specific category level distinguished by Rosch—for example, “kitchen table.”
Spreading activation
Activity that spreads out along any link in a semantic network that is connected to an activated node.
Hierarchical model
As applied to knowledge representation, a model that consists of levels arranged so that more specific concepts, such as canary or salmon, are at the bottom and more general concepts, such as bird, fish, or animal, are at higher levels.
Lexical decision task
A procedure in which a person is asked to decide as quickly as possible whether a particular stimulus is a word or a nonword.
Specific level
In Rosch’s categorization scheme, the level below the basic level (e.g., “kitchen table” for the basic category “table”).
Cognitive economy
A feature of some semantic network models in which properties of a category that are shared by many members of a category are stored at a higher-level node in the network. For example, the property “can fly” would be stored at the node for “bird” rather than at the node for “canary.”
Semantic network approach
An approach to understanding how concepts are organized in the mind that proposes that concepts are arranged in networks.
Connectionism
A network model of mental operation that proposes that concepts are represented in networks that are modeled after neural networks. This approach to describing the mental representation of concepts is also called the parallel distributed processing (PDP) approach. See also Connectionist network.
