Conceptual Knowledge

Question 1

What is a concept?

Answer 1

Mentally represented categories

Question 2

Provide examples of object concepts:

Answer 2

Dog, tulip

Question 3

provide examples of abstraction concepts

Answer 3

Time, money, life

Question 4

Provide an example of spatial relations concepts

Answer 4

In, on, up, down, under

Question 5

How many concepts does the average adult hold?

Answer 5

50,000

Question 6

What are concepts useful for?

Answer 6

They are constituents of thoughts, can compose into a full thought

Question 7

Concepts are means by which we ___ and ____ from experience.

Answer 7

Concepts are means by which we interpret and learn from experience

Question 8

Without concepts/categories, every instance of red would be?

Answer 8

Every instance of red would be a different color because you don’t understand the category of red.

Question 9

Theories of concepts need to explain?

Answer 9

Categorization
Combination
Communication
Concept acquisition
Inference (explanation, prediction)

Question 10

The first theory of concepts defined concepts as ?

Answer 10

Definitons

Question 11

Provide an example of concepts as definitions with triangles.

Answer 11

Has three sides
Is a necessary feature and a sufficient feature (only triangle have three sides)

Question 12

What are the strengths of a definitional theory for categorization?

Answer 12

Identification of N and S features

Question 13

What are the strengths of definitional theory in compbination?

Answer 13

Combination of n and s feature

Question 14

No one questioned thedefinitional theory until?

Answer 14

1950

Question 15

What are the problems with a definitional theory?

Answer 15

Most concepts are dicfficult to define
Most concepts have fuzzy boundaries
Some instances of a concept are betters than others

Question 16

Explain the problem of defining a concept for an animal to be a pet/

Answer 16

Are spiders or snakes excluded by your definition? (Domesticated?)
Are children or livestock included by your definition? (Unintentional inclusion)
Some concepts can defined, but most cannot (tiger, apple, gold, often natural kinds)

Question 17

Describe the issues of conceptual fuzziness in concepts as definitions with bachelor

Answer 17

An unmarried 30 year. Old male,
An unmarried 13 year old male
A recent widowed 90 year old male
A married 30 year old polygamist in search of another wife
The Pope???
Concept boundaries of fuzzy, don’t always effect

Question 18

Describe typicality effects as a problem for conceptual definitions

Answer 18

Concepts such as football and baseball are remembered as sports more often than sailing and archery. If concepts are definitons, then everything and everything that fits the definition fits the concept

Question 19

How is typicality studied? In sports?

Answer 19

Exemplary rating, 1 (good example) 7, bad examples
We rate football lower than something like wrestling
Or free recall

Question 20

What are the effects of typicality?

Answer 20

How quickly category members are identified
How quickly category membership is verified
How early category membership is learned

Question 21

Provide an example of a typicality effects in birds

Answer 21

Cardinals are identified faster, categorized as birds faster, and learned or earlier than emus

Question 22

How does typicality affect generalization? Describe Dunsmoor and Murphy and birds

Answer 22

Paired picture of birds with an electric sock and measured skin conductance
Typical bird condition and atypical birds, such as emu, penguins. Asked if learning to fear one set of bird generalize equally well to the other set? Generalizing only occurs if birds are typical (more sweat) when seeing atypical birds. FDear conditioning to typical birds generalized to atypical birds but not vice versa

Question 23

Describe prototype theory

Answer 23

Concepts are represented as sets of characteristic features (generally true) rather than defining features

Question 24

What are the strengths of prototype theory q

Answer 24

Most concepts are difficult to define
Most concepts have fuzzy boundaries
Some instances of a concept are better than others

Question 25

What are the problems with prototype theory

Answer 25

We can hold concepts in the absence of a prototype Prototypes are easily combined Typicality effects in prototype theory are about memory and meaning

Question 26

Describe the missing prototype problems?

Answer 26

While;e we can easily entertain the concept of cities that start with “f” we don’t have a prototype for such a city. We would need experience with the category before we can form a prototype

Question 27

How is compositionality and combination a problem for prototypes?

Answer 27

A per fish would have traits that aren’t part of just “pet” and “fish” such as living in a tank. How do we determine the features of a composite concepts if they are not features of constituents

Question 28

Describe the compositionality and fish/pet fish

Answer 28

Features of fish and features of pets were different from pet fish “ living in a n aquarium

Question 29

Describe typicality effects in prototypes in Rosch and Menis

Answer 29

interrpeted them as evidence that concepts are represented as prototypes

Question 30

Explain the exemplary rankings with odd numbers for prototypes

Answer 30

Rated higher numbers as bad examples of higher numbers compared to a commonly used numbers

Question 31

Describe the triangles and squares study

Answer 31

20% of people said a scalene triangle was a square despite rating equilateral triangles properly

Question 32

What do typicality effects tell us?

Answer 32

Tell us something about how instances of a concepts are encoded and stored in memory

Question 33

Describe the theory theory of concepts

Answer 33

Concepts are not a list of features but rather attain their meaning in terms of their relations of other concepts

Question 34

Describe theory theory in the concept of “in”

Answer 34

The meaning of in is intrinsically related to the meaning to the meanings of other spatial concepts (on, out, over under)

Question 35

Describe theory theory in terms of pawn?

Answer 35

The role of the pawn in the game of chess is relative to other pieces, not the shape of the object. Similarly concepts attain their meaning by their role in a theory relative to other concepts

Question 36

What are the strengths of the theory theory

Answer 36

No problems of other theories (such as typicality, fuzzy) Questions about concept use are more tractable on the theory-theory than on the other theories

Question 37

What are the problems of theory-theory?

Answer 37

The challenge for theory theorists if figuring out What theories people actually hold, and how they constrain categorization? However, these problems are empiricalq

Question 38

Work on theory theory primarily focuses on?

Answer 38

Space Number Biology Psychology Physics Of interest are intuitive, folk, or lay conceptions of a domain and how they change across development cultur

Question 39

Describe folk theories

Answer 39

Large cluster concepts are related that we use in an interlinked way

Question 40

Describe computational tractability

Answer 40

In addition to exploring the content of intuitive theories, many have explored their format using Bayes nets. Computers can make inferences that way.