Week 9/Chapter 9 Flashcards
Conceptual Knowledge
Knowledge that enables us to recognize objects and events and to make inferences about their properties.
Concepts
Mental representations of a class or individual.
Category
All possible examples of a particular concept
Categorization
The process by which things are placed in categories.
Definitional Approach to Categorization
We decide whether something is a member of a category by determining whether a particular object meets the definition of the category.
Family Resemblance
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 that category.
Prototype
A “typical” member of the category. Average.
Typicality
High - category members closely resemble category prototype.
Low - does not closely resemble prototype.
Sentence Verification Technique
Participants presented with statements, asked to answer yes or no.
Typicality Effect
The ability to judge highly prototypical objects more rapidly.
Priming
When presentation of one stimulus facilitates the response to another stimulus.
Exemplar Approach to Categorization
Determining whether an object is similar to other objects. involves many examples.
Exemplers
Actual members of the category that a person has encountered in the past.
Hierarchical Organization
Larger, more general categories are divided into smaller, more specific categories, creating a number of levels of categories.
Basic Level
Going above (super/global), results in a large loss of information; going below (sub/specific) results in little gain of information.
Semantic Network Approach
Concepts are arranged in networks.
Cognitive Economy
Storing shared properties just once at a higher-level node.
Spreading Activation
An activity that spreads out along any link that is connected to an activated node.
Lexical Decision Task
Participants read stimuli; some words, some not; indicate as quickly as possible whether each entry is a word or nonword.
Connectionism OR Parallel Distributed Processing.
An approach to creating computer models for representing cognitive processes.
Units
Circles, inspired by neurons found in the brain.
Input Units
Activated by stimuli from environment.
Hidden Units
Receive signals from input units; sends signals to output units.
Output Units
Receive signals from hidden units.
Connection Weight
Determines how signals sent rom one unit either increase or decrease the activity of the next unit.
Graceful Degradation
Disruption of performance occurs only gradually as parts of the system are damaged.
Category-Specific Memory Impairment
An impairment in which one loses the ability to identify one type of object, but can identify other types.
Sensory-Function Hypothesis
Our ability to differentiate living things and artifacts depends on a memory system that distinguishes sensory attributes and a system that distinguishes functions.
Multiple-Factor Approach
The idea of distributed representation; use more than just one or two features when grouping objects in terms of similarity.
Crowding
Animals share many properties; artifacts share fewer.
Semantic Category Approach
Specific neural circuits in the brain for some specific categories.
Embodied Approach
Knowledge of concepts 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.
Hub and Spoke Model
Areas of the brain that are associated with specific functions are connected to the ATL, which serves as a hub that integrates the information from these areas.
Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation
Demonstrate difference between hub and spoke; temporarily disrupt functioning of a particular area of human brain; pulsating magnetic field using stimulating coil over person’s skull.
