Week 7 - Conceptual knowledge Flashcards
conceptual knowledge
knowledge that enables us to recognize objects and events and to make inferences about their properties
Category
includes all possible examples of a particular concept.
definitional approach to categorization
States that we can decide whether some-thing is a member of a category by determining whether a particular object meets the definition of the category.
Family resemblance
refers to the idea that things in a particular category resemble one another in a number of ways.
prototype approach to categorization
membership in a category is determined by comparing the object to a prototype that represents the category.
prototype df
a “typical” member of the category.
Typicality
High typicality means that a category member closely resembles the category prototype
sentence verification technique
A technique used to determine how rapidly people could answer questions about an object’s category
e.g.
Participants are presented with statements and are asked to answer “yes” if they think the statement is true and “no” if they think it isn’t.
“An apple is a fruit. or “A pomegranate is a fruit.
Typicality effect
This ability to judge highly prototypical objects more rapidly
Priming in relation to prototypical members?
prototypical members of a category are more affected by a priming stimulus than are nonprototypical members
Exemplars
actual members of the category that a person has encountered in the past. Thus, if a person has encountered sparrows, robins, and blue jays in the past, each of these would be an exemplar for the category “birds.”
The Exemplar Approach to Categorization
like the prototype approach, involves determining whether an object is similar to other objects.
However, whereas the standard for the prototype approach is a single “average” member of the category, the standard for the exemplar approach involves many examples, each one called an exemplar
hierarchical organization (e.g. of chairs)
e.g. the category “chairs” can contain smaller categories such as kitchen chairs and dining room chairs.
Category levels (3)
(1) the superordinate level, which we will call the global level (for example, “furniture”);
(2) the basic level (for example, “table”); and
(3) the subordinate level, which we will call the specific level (for example, “kitchen table”).
semantic network approach
Takes a similar 3 tier-category approach as heirarchical organisation.
Concepts are nodes, which have property offshoots. They can also offshoot to a higher tier concept (e.g. canary to bird) or to a lower one (‘living’ to ‘bird’).
cognitive economy
A way of storing shared properties just once at a higher-level node.
Instead of repeating common features that match prototype/exemplar (e.g. ‘can fly’ for birds), they would just include them on higher-level node, and then write the anomolous property on the lower-tier concept (e.g. ‘cannot fly’ for emu)
Spreading activation
Activity that spreads out along any link that is connected to an activated node.
Lexical Decision Task
participants read stimuli, some of which are words and some of which are not words. Their task is to indicate as quickly as possible whether each entry is a word or a nonword.
Connectionism
An approach to creating computer models for representing cognitive processes.
AKA PDP
In a simple connectionist network, what do the following represent (description & analogy in brain):
Circles
Lines
3 layers:
Input units
Hidden units
Output units
Connection Weight
Circles - units /Inspired by neurons firing in the brain.
Lines - connections that transfer information between units / Axons
Input units - Units activated by stimuli from the environment / Stimuli
Hidden units - Receives information from input units, and sends to output / cognitive processing
Output units - Receives info from hidden inputs and concludes / outcome perception/belief etc.
Connection Weight - Determines how signals sent from one unit either increase or decrease the activity of the next unit. / What happens at synapse, which determines whether activity is increased or decreased in the next neuron
2 things that activation of a unit requires in simple connectionist network
(1) the signal that originates in the input units and
(2) the connection weights throughout the network
How training occurs in a connectionist network (2 steps)
The learning process occurs when the erroneous responses in the property units cause an error signal to be sent back through the network, by a process called back propagation (because they sent back from the property units).
The error signals that are sent back to the hidden units and the representation units provide information about how the connection weights should be adjusted so that the correct property units will be activated.
graceful degradation
The property, in which disruption of performance occurs only gradually as parts of the system is damaged
The sensory-functional (S-F) hypothesis (cue: concepts)
Posits that our ability to differentiate living things and artifacts depends on a memory system that distinguishes sensory attributes and a system that dis-tinguishes functions.
A category-specific memory impairment
An impairment in which they had lost the ability to identify one type of object (e.g. animals) but retained the ability to identify other types of objects.
Crowding (df)
Refers to the fact that animals tend to share many properties (like eyes, legs, and the ability to move)
The Multiple-Factor Approach
The idea of distributed representation is a central feature of the multiple-factor approach, which has led to searching for factors beyond sensory and functional that determine how concepts are divided within a category.
semantic category approach
proposes that there are specific neural circuits in the brain for some specific categories
The embodied approach
States that our knowledge of concepts is based on reactivation of sensory and motor processes that occur when we interact with the object
semantic somatotopy
correspondence between words related to specific parts of the body and the location of brain activity
Semantic dementia
causes a general loss of knowledge for all concepts.
Patients with semantic dementia tend to be equally deficient in identifying living things and artifacts
Hub and Spoke Model
According to this model, areas ofthe brain that are associated with specific functions are connected to the ATL (anterior Temporal Lobe), which serves as a hub that integrates the information from these areas.
Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS)
disrupt the functioning of a particular area of the human brain by applying a pulsating magnetic field using a stimulating coil placed over the person’s skull. A series of pulses presented to a particular area of the brain for seconds or minutes temporarily interferes with brain functioning in that area.
