Chapter 9 - Knowledge

Question 1

What are the qualities of knowledge?

Answer 1

Knowledge is used to make inferences. We use previously stored knowledge to make inferences (semantic memory), that much of our knowledge is implicit, and that knowledge is interconnected.

Question 2

What are categories?

Answer 2

Sets of items that are perceptually, biologically, or functionally familiar.

Question 3

What are exemplars?

Answer 3

Individual items in a category.

Question 4

What is a concept?

Answer 4

A mental representation of objects, ideas, or events.

Question 5

What is the Commonsense Problem?

Answer 5

Even implicit knowledge needs to be coded into a computer along with corresponding rules, which takes a long time to create.

Question 6

What is the classical view of categorization?

Answer 6

Categories are clearly defined by sets of defining features that are both NECESSARY and SUFFICIENT for category membership.
Necessary: Without them, category membership is not possible.
Sufficient: As long as an exemplar has that set of defining features it belongs to the category.
So based on this perspective, categorization is a matter of defining features of individual exemplars.

Question 7

What are the two forms of evidence against the classical approach of categorization?

Answer 7

Theoretical and empirical.

Question 8

What is the first problem of the classical approach of categorization?

Answer 8

It is nearly impossible to identify defining features for most categories. There are often exceptions that still belong to a certain category.

Question 9

What is the concept of a typicality effect?

Answer 9

When people recognize some exemplars as ‘better’ representations of a category than others.

Question 10

What was Rosch’s (1975) experiment on typicality ratings?

Answer 10

Rosch asked participants to rate items based on how good of an example of a category an item was.

Question 11

What are typicality effects defined?

Answer 11

Differential treatment of typical and atypical objects.
- We name typical objects first when asked about a category
- We put typical objects into categories faster than atypical objects
Note: These tendencies begin in early age.

Question 12

What are lexical decision tasks?

Answer 12

Showing participants a string of letters and determining if they are words or not.

Question 13

What are priming effects?

Answer 13

When participants identify a word faster after being exposed to a semantically related word (more robust for typical words.

Question 14

What research on typicality effects was conducted by Onishi et al. (2008)

Answer 14

Participants listened to and then repeated sentences that combined an atypical and typical category. Participants were more likely to reproduce a sentence with typical words, concluding that object typicality influences language and memory.

Question 15

What are the three theories of categorization?

Answer 15

1. Prototype theory of categorization
2. Knowledge-based theories of categorization
3. Exemplar theory of categorization

Question 16

What is the prototype theory of categorization?

Answer 16

Instead of relying on defining features, we consider which features are most likely among category types (probalistic theory) which assumes we consider the most characteristic features of a given exemplar.

Characteristic theories are stored together in a prototype, and as the average of all category members, it is the most typical member of a category.

Question 17

What are characteristic features?

Answer 17

Features that are likely to belong to category members but are not required for category membership.

Question 18

What are the issues with the prototype theory of categorization?

Answer 18

As the prototype perspective highlights how categorization is flexible, typicality depends on CONTEXT.

e.g., a robin may be a prototypical bird in America, but a rainbow lorikeet may be a prototypical bird in Australia!

Question 19

What is the exemplar theory of categorization?

Answer 19

We store actual examples of items we have encountered in the past. Categorization occurs by comparing new items with ones in memory which can help explain typicality.

Question 20

What is psychological essentialism?

Answer 20

The idea that all category members possess a fundamental essence that is unique to that category and determines membership.

Question 21

What is risk of essentialism?

Answer 21

Applying ‘essential’ qualities to social categories as we do biological categories.

Generalizing about social categories may lead to stereotyping. Just because people belong to a certain group does not mean they possess all the same characteristics.

Question 22

What is the idea of category hierarchies by Rosch et al. (1976) and which are they?

Answer 22

Individual items can belong to multiple levels of categories. There are:
1. Superordinate categories (“fruits”)
2. Basic-level categories (“apples”)
3. Subordinate categories (“gala apples”)

Question 23

What are basic-level categories?

Answer 23

Categories that seem to be ‘just right’. They are informative and provide information about the category, and they are distinctive as information differentiates members from other categories.

Question 24

What are subordinate categories?

Answer 24

Informative but not distinctive. They belong to a basic-level category and share many features in common with other items.

Question 25

What are superordinate categories?

Answer 25

Categories that are distinctive but not informative.

Question 26

What is the category hierarchy in order?

Answer 26

1. Superordinate (the largest, like “vegetable” or “weather”) 2. Basic (the middle, like “pepper” or “cloud”) 3. Subordinate (the smallest, like “serrano pepper” or “cirrus cloud”)

Question 27

What is the cognitive economy?

Answer 27

Having limited storage capacity; stores at highest level of hierarchy.

Question 28

What is property inheritance?

Answer 28

Subordinate categories inherit properties of superordinate categories they are connected to.

Question 29

What is the relationship of number of hierarchical levels to reaction time?

Answer 29

The more hierarchical levels that one must consider or think of, the longer the reaction time in a processing task.

Question 30

What is schemata?

Answer 30

Knowledge organized into groups of related information.

Question 31

What is Bartlett’s (1932) study and what did it discover?

Answer 31

Participants are shown an original image on day 1, and are instructed to recreate the image via drawings for 5 days after. This found that what we remember is influenced by our past experience and knowledge. Over time, details are lost from memory, but individuals can use their schematic knowledge of faces to create an image. Memory is reconstructive.

Question 32

What is a schema?

Answer 32

A broad, yet organized knowledge base.

Question 33

What is graceful degradation?

Answer 33

Knowledge is stored as a pattern of activity across many units. Connectionist units can withstand unit loss with limited negative events.

Question 34

What are category-specific deficits?

Answer 34

Loss of elements of semantic knowledge. Memory can be retained for one type of idea or thing, but not another.

Question 35

What was Ralph, Lowe, & Rogers (2007) discovery on neural network models and category deficit?

Answer 35

An ANN was used to simulate a damaged system of a patient living with a living-thing category deficit. Trained a network to recognize living and non-living things. Altered connection weights to mimic deficits, and eventually the system could no longer recognize living things. This evidence supports the idea that human knowledge may be stored as a distributed pattern of activity across neurons.

Question 36

What is the black-box problem?

Answer 36

We can observe the responses of a neural network to a specific input, but we cannot determine why a specific response occurred.

Question 37

What is the symbol grounding problem?

Answer 37

Symbols can only be explained by other symbols. They need to be grounded in experience with the real world.

Question 38

What did Dijkstra & Post (2015) discovery about cognition and the body?

Answer 38

Autobiographical memory retrieval can be improved by matching body position at retrieval to body position at encoding. People recall their lat dentist visit when they are in a reclined chair versus standing up. People are more likely to rate descriptions of people as ‘warm’ after holding a hot versus iced coffee cup.

Question 39

What did Barsalou (2008) discovery about embodied (grounded) cognition?

Answer 39

That sensory experiences are used to understand abstract cognitive thought. Knowledge uses sensorimotor neurons as perception and action. Our knowledge of an apple, for example, is dependent on modality specific neurons such as taste, visual, and tactile.

Question 40

What did Hauk, Johnsrude, & Pullvermuller (2004) discovery about embodied (grounded) cognition?

Answer 40

There was similar brain activity for physical movement and movement-related thought.

Question 41

What are the traits of knowledge according to theories of embodied cognition?

Answer 41

Knowledge is… 1. Goals-Driven 2. Flexible 3. Context-Dependent The information we retrieve from semantic memory depends on the context we are in any given moment.

Question 42

What is semantic dementia?

Answer 42

The progressive loss of all semantic knowledge. Associated with degeneration of neurons in the anterior temporal lobe (ATL). Not all cases of damage to the ATL will result in semantic knowledge loss. Neuroimaging of healthy brains rarely displays activation of the ATL in semantic memory tasks, instead displaying widely distributed activity.

Question 43

What is the hub-and-spoke model of neuroimaging and knowledge representation?

Answer 43

Generalized and abstract semantic knowledge is stored in a semantic memory hub in the ATL. Context-dependent and modality specific details are stored in spokes that are distributed across the cortex.

Question 44

What is Chapter 9, summarized (1/2)?

Answer 44

1. Categories group similar items together, with concepts being our mental representations of those items. Traditionally, items belonged to a category if they had certain defining features. 2. Typicality effects show that some category members are more representative than others. 3. Prototype theory suggests we store average, idealized examples of categories. Exemplar theory argues we remember actual specific instances we’ve encountered. Knowledge-based theories claim we use our existing knowledge to classify things.

Question 45

What is Chapter 9, summarized (2/2)?

Answer 45

4. Hierarchical models organize knowledge in levels (superordinate, basic, subordinate). Semantic network models store related concepts closer together based on similarity. Schemata are organized knowledge structures about specific topics. 5. Embodiment theories debate whether the body causes cognition or merely influences it.