Cognitive Psych Exam 3 Open Response

Describe the prototype approach to categorization. Define "prototype" and give examples for the category of "clothing." Mention one item that is high and one that is low on prototypicality in the clothing category.

A cognitive psychological theory that suggests that when people categorize objects, they do so based on how similar the object is to an ideal example of that category. A prototype is a mental representation of the idealized form of an object or concept. Clothing would be a t-shirt which is high prototypical. A low example would be a belt.

Describe the conceptual peg hypothesis. Explain the paired-associate learning task, and provide examples of stimuli that had high recall in the task.

A hypothesis that states that concrete nouns create images that other words can hang onto which enhances memory for these words. The PALT is a task in which participants are first presented with pairs of words, then one word of each pair is presented and the task is to recall the other words. It was easier to remember concrete nouns like truck or tree that can be imagined.

Conversation is often described as a "give and take" that is generally more effective when people are "on the same page." Explain these concepts from the perspective of cognitive psychology. Provide examples to support your ideas.

A person contributes info to the conversation while the other person listens and then then roles reverse. Conversations are more effective when people are on the same page because it is more effective if two people are talking about the same topic.

Explain how learning occurs in a connectionist network. Describe the process of back propagation. How is the pattern of output activity in a network adjusted so that the output signal matches the correct signal for a given stimulus?

All the long term knowledge in a connectionist network is encoded by where the connections are or by their weights, so learning consists of changing the weights or adding/removing connections. Back propagation is a process in which learning can occur in a connectionist network, in which an error signal is transmitted backward through the network. This backward transmitted error signal provides the information needed to adjust the weights in the network to achieve the correct output signal for the stimulus.

Explain how imagery neurons are similar to mirror neurons. Provide examples for each type of neuron to support your thinking.

Both neurons fire when an action is perceived. Imagery neurons fire both when stimulus is perceived and imagined. Mirror neurons react when a particular action is formed and when it is only observed.

Present a hierarchical model for a living thing or artifact, moving from specific to general. Include at least three levels and be sure to include both sensory and functional properties.

Computer: helps people with daily life tasks, feel the keys on the keyboard, see the light on the screen Hard Drive: runs the computer and stores information, feel heat when it gets overrun Memory: holds all the memory of lots of things, see the things that it holds

Describe in detail the differences differences between the way experts and non-experts go about solving problems. In your answer, highlight the advantages and disadvantages to being an expert in a field.

Experts possess more knowledge about their field and their knowledge is organized differently. They also spend more time analyzing problems. Expertise is only an advantage in an expert's specialty. A disadvantage is that being an expert in one field may make experts less open to new ways of looking at a problem.

Compare and contrast functional fixedness and mental set. Give examples of each in the context of problem solving to support your thinking.

Functional fixedness is focusing on familiar functions or uses of an object (ex. candle problem). A mental set is a preconceived notion about how to approach a problem (jug problem).

What is the consensus on neural overlap in perception and imagery? Provide descriptions of at least two research efforts to support your answer.

If imagery affects perception, perception affects imagery. They both have access to the same mechanisms. Two research efforts would be Perkys experiment where she asked participants to "project" visual images of common objects onto a screen and then describe these images. Another experiment would be Martha Farah, who instructed her particiapnts to imagine either the letter H or the letter T on a screen, once they did that they pressed a button that caused two squares to flash and they had to indicate which letter was in the first square.

Identify the types of meaning dominance in language. Give examples of each to support your thinking.

Meaning dominance is when meanings of words occur more frequently than others. Biased dominance is when a word has more than one meaning but one meaning is more likely (ex. tin). Balanced dominance is when a word has more than one meaning and all meanings are equally used (ex. cast)

Why might training in media literacy be important for young people? Ground your argument in cognitive psychology concepts, and provide examples from the current media landscape to support your opinion.

Media literacy is important because many young people have media-structured lives with few rules on media use established by their parents. It is important that they are taught young so they can form proper media skills and habits.

Describe the paper folding test and explain how it is useful for measuring a person's spatial imagery capacity.

Participants view diagrams of paper being folded and then a hole punched through it. Then they identify the spatial arrangement of the punches after unfolding. It's useful because it requires the individual to mentally visualize and manipulate objects.

Explain how personal knowledge impacts the basic level of categorization under Rosch's approach. Give examples comparing two individuals' knowledge of a concept to support your thinking.

Personal knowledge can impact the basic levels of categorization because depending on which group is asked about a concept, their level of knowledge on the concept can be completely different. For example, asking a random college student to identify 10 different plants may result in answers like "tree" or "flower" but someone who studies plants would say "oak" or "daisy."

Compare and contrast the "system" and "type" approaches to thinking. Why do professionals generally favor one perspective over the other? Give examples of situations from each perspective to support your thinking.

Professionals favor the type perspective because it better reflects the interconnected, distributed processing that occurs in the brain. An example of type would be a parent reflexively getting their child out of harm's way without thinking. An example of a system would be knowing how to tie your shoelaces.

Compare and contrast Skinner and Chomsky's views on language acquisition. Give examples of each perspective to support your ideas.

Skinner argued that language develops through reinforcement, as people associate words with reference. Chomsky argued that humans have language modules in the brain that facilitate language development.

Compare and contrast spatial and propositional representation. Give an example of each based on the same stimulus.

Spatial representation is when different parts of an image can be described in a specific location in space. Propositional representation can be represented by abstract symbols like a statement. For example, an image of a cat under a table, and a statement saying "the cat is under the table."

If human speech is just an ongoing stream of sounds, how are computerized voice recognition systems able to function effectively? What "human" capabilities and qualities do they need to be programmed with? Give examples to support your thinking.

Streams of sounds are similar to streams of code in that they have patterns for recognition. For example, with computer code, a series of 1s and 0s are used to create a system that recognizes those codes into action. Some human capabilities and qualities that they would probably need to be programmed with is tone identification and discerning accents of users.

Discuss how a person's judgments are affected by the way choices are framed. Give an example of a choice framed in terms of gains and an example of a choice framed in terms of losses. Which decision making strategy is likely to be used in each case? Why?

The way something is framed can influence our certainty that it will bring either gain or loss. People are more inclined to choose the option that has the most positive sounding outcome, regardless of whether the option is actually a good one or if it's equal to the negatively-framed option.

Explain how language and music are both similar and different.

They both combine elements like tone and create structured sequences. However, there is a difference between creating phrases in response to music and creating phrases when having a conversation.