Section 5: Knowing (Semantic Memory & Concepts)

Question 1

What is semantic memory?

Answer 1

Memory for general knowledge, facts, and concepts that are not tied to specific experiences.

Question 2

What is episodic memory?

Answer 2

Memory for personal experiences tied to specific times and places.

Question 3

What is declarative (explicit) vs. nondeclaritive (implicit) memory?

Answer 3

Declarative (explicit) = memories you can consciously bring to mind
Nondeclarative (implicit) = skills & unconscious influences

Question 4

What type of memory do amnesic patients often lose?

Answer 4

Episodic memory, while semantic memory may remain intact.

Question 5

What does the existence of category-specific deficits suggest?

Answer 5

• Category-specific deficit = loss of one semantic category (e.g., living things)
• Semantic memory is organized by categories, such as living vs. nonliving things.

Question 6

What is anomia (anomic aphasia)?

Answer 6

• Deficit in word finding
• Affects word knowledge category of semantic memory

Question 7

What did the delayed matching task across species show?

Answer 7

• Shown 4 items, delay, test probe
• Short delay = recency effect
  Long delay = primacy effect
• Same pattern across species

Question 8

What are semantic networks?

Answer 8

• Semantic memory is a NETWORK of interconnected NODES (concepts) that are linked by PATHWAYS
• Relies on SPREADING ACTIVATION (mental activity of accessing/retrieving info from network)

Question 9

What is cognitive economy in a semantic network?

Answer 9

• Shared properties are stored at the highest level possible to minimize redundancy
• Requires concept of INHERITANCE (properties of higher nodes apply to lower nodes)

Question 10

What is spreading activation?

Answer 10

Activating one concept spreads activation to related concepts, facilitating retrieval.

Question 11

What does the sentence verification task show?

Answer 11

People respond faster to closer semantic relationships (e.g., ‘A canary is a bird’ vs. ‘A canary is an animal’).

Question 12

What are feature-comparison models?

Answer 12

• Concepts are stored as lists of features
• Stage 1 = global feature comparison (fast, rough check of similarities)
• Stage 2 = comparison of defining features (slow, careful check when stage 1 inconclusive)

Question 13

What is the semantic relatedness effect?

Answer 13

Concepts that are more related are judged faster

Question 14

What do connectionist (parallel distributed processing) models emphasize?

Answer 14

• Knowledge emerges from patterns of activation across networks of interconnected units
• Concepts get linked because they co-occur, not because they make sense logically

Question 15

What is mediated priming?

Answer 15

• Weakness of network models
• E.g., Lion –> stripe primes faster than expected even though they don’t co-occur
• But Lion –> tiger –> stripe

Question 16

What is semantic priming?

Answer 16

Faster recognition of a word when preceded by a related word due to spreading activation.

Question 17

What is lexical decision task?

Answer 17

• see string of letters & press yes if word, no if not
• manipulated if primer is unrelated (chair - apple) or related (doctor - nurse)
• shorter STIMULUS-ONSET ASYNCHRONY = stronger priming
• priming effect = RT(control) - RT(prime)

Question 18

What is stimulus-onset asynchony?

Answer 18

Time interval between onset of prime and onset of target in priming experiment (how long you have to process the prime before target)

Question 19

What is the difference between automatic and strategic priming?

Answer 19

• Automatic = fast, positive (facilitation), unrelated to strategy
• Strategic = slow, positive or negative (facilitation or inhibition), depends on strategy

Question 20

What is a schema?

Answer 20

Stored framework or body of knowledge about a topic

Question 21

What is a script?

Answer 21

• Large scale knowledge structure that guides interpretations and comprehension of daily experience (event sequence)
• Activated by “headers”
• E.g., restaurant story (more likely to endorse yes to related questions even if they aren’t explicitly stated bc you have a script of what that is like)

Question 22

What are concepts as lists of features?

Answer 22

• Listing sets of necessary & sufficient features
• E.g., bachelor = unmarried, male, human
• If something has all of those features, it is a bachelor; if it lacks one, it is not a bachelor

Question 23

What challenges concepts as a feature list?

Answer 23

• Kids don’t behave this way (overextension & underextension of words)
• Some concepts don’t have strict defining features (e.g., “game”)

Question 24

What are concepts as a reference?

Answer 24

• Words are inherently arbitrary (just labels that social groups agree on)
• Basically a rule indicating what things a word refers to

Question 25

What are challenges to concepts as a reference (Ludwig)?

Answer 25

- Not everyone agrees on what a word refers to (justice, fairness, freedom) - Some meaningful concepts refer to nothing (unicorn, ghost, mermaid) - Two terms that refer to the same thing can mean different things - "Fuzzy set"

Question 26

What are concepts as prototypes?

Answer 26

- A concept is represented by its best example (not strict rules) - Some are more typical (apple for fruit; robin for bird) - Typical prototypes are verified faster, produced more often, learned earlier

Question 27

What are ad hoc categories?

Answer 27

- New categories based on situational circumstances - E.g., things found in hardware store, things to take out of burning building