Cognitive Ch. 9. Semantic Organization. Reed

faster responding times

reflect simpler memory processes and/or responding times

Schema

a mental representation of an object, scene or events Countryside, grass, hills, farms, a barn, cows

slower responses reflect

more complex processes and more unfamiliar memories

Source monitoring and reality monitoring are

subject to error. the more the memories are similar from different sources the more chances people will make an error

True memories contain

True (actually experienced) memories contain more sensory detail, contextual information, possibly an emotional component that are less descriptive of False Memories.information, possibly

What are the differences between episodic and autobiographical memory?

- EM does not tell a story - our lives do - Retention interval with EM is less than an hour - AM can last a lifetime - AM contain many modalities - EM has minimal emotional involvement - AM can be emotional -

What are some of the problems with the FCM

- That it relies on similarity ratings to make most of its predictions. If people rate an example as highly similar to their concept or a category, they wil be fast to verify that it belongs in that category. - all classifications require computations - that we use the features of concepts to compute the degree of similarity - the distinction between charateristics and features

How is memory organized?

1. Hierarchical networks 2. Feature lists including comparison lists 3. Schemas?

What are the 3 components of Collins & Quillan's model of semantic memory

1. Nodes 2. Properties 3. Associative links

External source monitoring

A or B told you something

FCM 1st stage

All features of two concepts to see how similar they are to each other robin - bird

Semantic memory

Athens is the capital of Greece

What are the Collins & Quillan's major results?

Categories are recalled faster than properties Does not predict typicality effect

Internal source monitoring

Did you dream it? DRM illusion

What are the problems with C & Q hierarchical model?

Hierarchicy not like an encyclopeadia •Controlling for familiarity greatly reduces the hierarchical distance effect - Does not account for Typicality effect: Verification is faster for more familiar member categories, independent of hierarchical distance (Rips, Shoben, & Smith, 1973) • e.g. Is "A PENGUIN is a bird" slower than "A CANARY is a bird"? • Typical items have more commonalities with their category than atypical items - Categories are fuzzier than Collins and Quillian believed links same distance apart does not account for relatedness

Why does the Feature Comparison Model explain why some false statements are evaluated more quickly than the Hierarchical Network Model?

In the FCM, two dissimilarnoun pairs - a pencil is a bird - can be evaluated quickly at the first stage with an immediate descision if they fit. The HNM each word must be evaluated to other words in the network. Since they are not related it take time to evaluate,

Modal

Knowledge is represented as sensory experiences - audition, vision, taste, smell, touch perceptual symbols are stored in LTM and retrieve by reenacting perceptual experiences

episodic memory

Life events, personal experiences When I was in Greece I visited Athens Scripts and autobiographical memory

Links

Lines showing relationship between nodes

Autobiographical memory

Memory about our personal experiences information from sensory, language, emotion, and other systems Share similiarities with episodic memory, it has a context

Eyewitness testimony

Memory can be distorted as people try and fit new info into existing schemas Sometimes new info is distorted by trying to fit into existing schemas Distortion can also be based on subsequent info - Loftus study - retroactive interference

Priming

Meyer and Schvaneveldt (1971) • The spreading activation model is often used to explain the phenomenon of priming. • the time required to indicate that the words • "nurse" and "doctor", is less than for • "nurse" and "butter". • From the spreading activation point of view, activation of the semantic node for doctor may result in the spread of activation to the related node for nurse. • This spread of activation would imply that less subsequent activation for the word nurse would be required to decide that it is a word. In effect, activation of the node for nurse gets a head start from the spread of activation from the node for doctor.

Hierarchical network model

Model proposing that items are categorized by using the hierarchical relations in specified in a semantic network animal bird robin is very effective, increases amount of information we can retain and it influences the amount of time is needed to retrieve information.

Bower 1969

Presented participants with 112 words (4 groups of 28 words each). Half saw words grouped into categories and half saw them randomly arranged. They were asked to recall words in any order. (We did this in class too!) as you would expect, the participants in the organized condition outperformed participants in the random condition. This proves that participants could store the input into organized hierarchies: this organization allows us to structure memory so that it can be searched more efficiently.

Meyer and Schvanevldt (1971)

Priming experiment for spreading activation model. Lexical decision task(decide if a string of letters is a real word) Results: faster lexical decision times when the two words are semantically related( bread and butter) than when the words were semantically unrealted(bear and sign) These results are sons intent with spreading activation from 1st to 2nd word.

What is an advantage of the HNM?

Provides economical way to store info

Chase and Ericsson

Single study, recalling 70 numbers

Category size effect

The finding that members of smaller categories are classified more quickly than members of larger categories collie - dog collie - animal dog requires fewer inferences than animal

Value of schematic centrality

When asked to respond as quickly as possible to whether a script and activity belong together(i.e. Changing a tire and taking out a jack), participants verify important(Central) acts more quickly

Reality monitoring

Whether something really happened

characteristics of episodic memory

forgetting. highly susceptible units. facts episodes organization. time, space reference. self (auto biographical) encoding. sensory emotion. stronger role dependence from context. strong access to data. controlled cue for retrieval. when ..where

Characteristics of semantic memory

forgetting. typically remembered units. facts, ideas, concepts organization. conceptual reference. world encoding. symbolic emotion. weaker role dependence from contex. weak access to data. automatic cue for retrieval. what

Prefrontal cortex

guides retrieval and monitors for feelings of rightness

What is a strength of the semantic network theory?

its ability to organize large bodies of knowlegde

Default knowledge

knowledge about the likely values for the attributes of schema

What is a strength of the perceptual symbols theory?

simulating paritcular cases

Node

the format for representing concepts in a semantic network

When do source confusions occur?

when individuals misattribute a memory from one source to another source.

FCM 2nd

when the degree of similarity is between the two extremes one evaluates the defining features. Bird - chicken

The degree of facilitation depends on

whether one follows the same path in the network to answer two questions.

HNM-cannot explain

1. Verification time is not a function of levels in the hierarchy - it takes longer to verify that a chimp is a primate than it is an animal 2. Typicality effect - the fact that more typical members of categories are easier to classify than less typical ones - canary bird rather than ostrich is a bird

Typicality

How well a category member represents a category-can calculate family resemblance

What is the Collins and Quillan's model of semantic memory?

Collins and Quillian (1969) Semantic memory is organized into a series of hierarchical networks - Major concepts are represented as nodes - Properties/features are associated with each concept • Cognitive economy rules: - Property information is stored as high up the hierarchy as possible to minimize redundancy Examples: • Nodes: Animal; Bird; Fish; Canary • Features: Has wings; Is dangerous Links of same length

sentence verification

Collins and Quillian (1969) used this to test semantic knowledge. Participants answer true or false to statements like "a bird is an animal" as fast as they can. The first sentence asks if one category is a member of another. The second asked about the features of a category member. The results showed that the response times depended on the number of "levels" that had to be considered-- it takes more time to move farther through the network. They also showed that it took longer to answer to questions about the features of a category member (property questions). Measure = RT (DV)

How does linguistic and cognitive develop coincide?

Linguistic development begins starts with ones first words. Once you can label objects - table, dog, Mom then they exist. Interaction with one's physical and social environments is essential for cognitive development. This is the beginning of object permanence.

What is the development of the self?

Linguistic markers also evidence the growing sense of self. The personal pronouns I and me are acquired first at approximately 22 months, "you" follows about 2 months later. Normal 2 year olds rarely mix up I/me with you. At about 2 toddlers begin to use grammatical morphemes that indicate tense. The first to appear is "-ing" to oging events, followed by the introduction of the past tense. . infantile amnesia goes away at this time

Source Monitoring Framework

Real and imagined memories may differ on a number of dimensions - Real ones contain more perceptual/sensory information, more contextual information and more supporting memories. But time blurs this distinction. People decide the origin of their memories by eliminating qualitative characteristics and by using a reasoning process

Loftus study

Subjects shown video of an accident between two cars Some subjects asked: How fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other? Others asked: How fast were the cars going when they hit each other? Results: Speed estimates depended on how the question was phrased Subjects memory for broken glass also depended on the phrasing of the speed question. (A question. (A priming of sorts) But this was a false memory: there was no broken glass. And depended on definite [the] vs. indefinite [some; a] articles. glass.

What are network models?

The idea of associative structures as the basis of such models Complexes of associations - mental representations of knowledge with a large number of smaller units (with a large number of smaller units (nodes), joined in a tangled web of associations by a huge number of links; there are node to node links and node to properties links

Feature Comparison Model Defining Features

The most essential features Necessary in category Bird - being alive, having feathers and wings

What is the speed of retrieval with Collins& Quillan's model

The speed of information retrieval (Reaction Time) is a function of the semantic distance between two nodes in the network, or between a node and a property. So RT = the DV

What was Rumelharts schema theory?

Theory about how information is represented and about how that representation facilitates the use of knowledge in various ways.

Temporal organization

There is also evidence that actions within scripts are organized based on temporal order(barsalou & Sewell 1985). WHen asked to list actions in a script order, more actions were listed than when asked to list them in orde of importance(centrality)

Scripts

Types of schema Sequence of events that make up routine activities. Shank & Abelson(1977) idea that knowledge is organized in terms of scripts--roles, props/objects, conditions, results(centrality) and sequences of events(temporal order). Most sequences of events for frequent activities are standard--no need to recall all events that take place on each occasion. Rather pick out the events that are NOT standard

Does the Feature Overlap Model account for the Typicality Effect?

Yes it does. typical exemplars have extensive overlap of features, thus Stage 1 only; atypical exemplars have less overlap and overlap of features, thus Stage 1 only; atypical exemplars have less overlap and require require more time to determine their membership, which means going on to Stage 2.

Can you alter autobiographical memory? Have false memories for personal events?

Yes, Disney study

Bartlett's schema theory

an active organizations of past experiences in which the mind abstracts a general cognitive structure to represent many particular instances of those experiences. all new information interacts with old information represented in the schema - War of the Ghosts

Spreading Activation model

concepts are joined together by links that show their relationships. The length of each link represents the degree of relatedness between the two concepts (shorter=more related). When a particular concept is "activated" nearby concepts become activated as well (thinking of a chair makes us also think of a table). Effectiveness is decreased as activation travels outward from the "epicenter". This model also predicts typicality because more typical models with activate the superordinate (more general) members sooner than less typical members. Dependent on associations made when encoding!!! Limitations: too many assumptions and too few clear cut predictions Whenever a person encounters or thinks of a concept, that node is activated - Activation then spread store lated concepts • Spreading activation decreases as it gets further away from the original point of activation (i.e. weakly related items receive less spreading activation) - Explains the typicality effect - Predicts semantic priming: » A semantically-related word facilitates the processing/identification of a target word » e.g. It is faster to say "BUTTER" is a real word if preceded by "BREAD" instead of an unrelated word like "NURSE" (Meyer & Schvaneveldt, 1976) The spreading activation model is more flexible than the hierarchical network model - Pros of flexibility: • The spreading activation model can account for more empirical findings - Cons of flexibility: •The flexibility also reduces the specificity of the model's predictions, making the spreading activation model more difficult to test

episodic operations

consequence of retrieval. change of the system label for retrieval. remember appearance in development. late infantile amnesia. yes

semantic operations

consequence of retrieval. no changes label for retrieval. know appearance in development. early infantile amnesia. no

Mug shot induced bias

exposure to mug shots of a suspect increases the likelihood that the witness will later choose that suspect in a lineup

Amodal

knowledge that is abstracted from sensory experiences they do not represent the perceptual experiences encountered in learning about concepts a list of features or a list of associations in semantic network

Reversal of category size effect

people more quickly verify that member belongs to a larger category rather than the usual category size effect. Examples that are consistently found in research (e.g., often replicated: monkey is an animal faster than monkey is a primate; whiskey is a drink faster than whiskey is an alcohol.

False memories contain

phrases like "sort of", "kind of", "it seems like", and so on. Cognitive operations are much more likley to be used when discussing a false memory for example: "I Think that..."

Feature Comparison Model Characteristic feature

possessed by category members Not necessary bird - able to fly and being in a certain size range

Schema theory

refers to a collection of models presuming that we encode such cluster into memory and use them to comprehend and store our experiences

Typicality effect

refers to the phenomenon in which experimental subjects are faster to respond to typical instances of a concept, for example, robin for the concept "bird" , than the y are to atypical instances, for example, penguin.

metamemory

the awareness of one's own memory processes. studies by means of verbal reports remember vs. know judgements feelings of knowing for experiences questionaires about your memory

mental chronometry

the study of the accurate measurement of

Object Permanence

understanding that objects are things out there that you can perceive and manipulate and exist even when you can't see them out of sight out of mind

Smith's feature overlap model

uses lists of features instead of network Concepts are defined by a list of features 1. defining feature - a feature that is necessary to be a member of a category 2. Characteristic - A feature that is usually present in members of that category, but is not necessary These features are stored in a redundant manner, thus no cognitive economy. The decision of whether one concept is an example of an another depends upon the level of overlap. In the case of robin and bird there would be a high degree of overlap. The more overlap the quicker you answer the question. Ambiguity slows reaction time