cognitive psych test 3

critical period for learning spatial prepositions

(ex: in, on...) before 7 years, like function morphemes

What is the exemplar theory (a.k.a., exemplar-based reasoning), and how does it differ from the prototype model? Describe the evidence for the exemplar theory

-Exemplar theory is a process in which one uses a specific remembered instance as the main thing to which other objects will be compared. For example, one would not use the prototype of a chair which might be that a chair is wooden, has four legs, and has slats on the back (the average of all chairs one normally sees). Instead, one would use a specific chair (ex: from a family member's house) and compare all possible chairs to that specific chair and see if a particular object matches enough to be categorized as a chair. -The evidence supporting the exemplar theory, states that the memories and retrieval paths for common objects are more primed than those that are less familiar. This theory would argue that one is more unlikely to think an apricot is a fruit than an apple, because we have many specific memories of apples which allow for many potential retrieval paths from those memories so familiar objects are better primed than those that are less familiar and that have fewer memories attached to them.

learning morphology (deaf children)

-Goldin-Meadow (1994)= deaf children of hearing parents who did not use sign language -children invented signs, content morphemes first to express meaning, then function morphemes (a hammer vs hammering) -Sengha's (1995)= Nicaraguan deaf children develop own languae

prototypical items facts about speed, when they are learned etc

-are categorized faster than other items -are generated first and most often -are learned 1st by children -show asymmetries in similarity judgements (ex: North kore is more similar to China than China is to North Korea)

limitations if exemplar and prototype theory

-both have to do with object's external features, but an object can be a member of a category even when it lacks all of the typical features -typical features not necessary nor sufficient ex: abused lemon, counterfeit bill

content morphemes

-convey meaning ex: chef, burn...

critical period for learning morphemes

-critical period is before 7 -levels of 7-20 then not really able to learn

empiricists vs nativists how language arises

-empiricists=ex: Skinner said language is entirely learned -nativists= ex: Chomsky argued language is innate, but input matters -both right- it is a mix of the two

neglect patient and imagery

-neglect patient cannot even construct an image of things on that one neglected side

coarticulation

-part of speech segmentation -the bending of phonemes at words boundaries -ex: this guy vs the sky

smallest to largest organization of language

-phoneme -morpheme -word -phrase -sentence

phonemes are categorized by 3 dimensions

-place of articulation= WHERE airflow is restricted ex: pail, tail, kale vs bot, dot, cot -manner of production= HOW airflow is restricted ex: do, new (hold nose and say "new" and it sounds like do) also sap vs tap, airflows out of mouth for sap and is stopped for tap -voicing= when vocal cords start vibrating ex: bat vs pat

2 challenges in phonology

-speech segmentation -categorical perception

exemplar theory

-store individual instances rather than prototype -new objects compared to all individual instances -exemplars are more flexible

what errors do we notice first?

1st recognize semantic errors (Wernicke's area) then syntactic errors (Broca's area)

example of a concept

An example of a concept is a classroom. Using the prototype theory I would describe a classroom as a room with a white board at the front, and plasticy metal chairs with individual semi rectangular desks in rows or an organized pattern that mostly all face toward the front where the teacher would stand because that is what my classroom looked like for most of my education. However, if I were to categorize a classroom by the exemplar theory I may use the specific example of my high school physics classroom where instead a classroom would be defined as a room with long black tables that each sat two students and had two chairs. There would be a chalkboard in the front of the classroom as well as a projector screen. There would also be additional tables with taller stools at the back of the classroom to use for potential labs or activities and a few computers lining the back wall of the classroom.

chronometric studies

Ask participants to manipulate the mental images, then observe how long these manipulations take

What is the role of Broca's Area? What is the role of Wernicke's Area? Where is each of these areas located in the brain? (Be able to either describe their locations in words or find in a diagram, depending on how the question is asked on the test). What are the conditions called, in which people have damage to each of these areas? Describe what happens when on has damage to each area, and what each kind of damage tells us about the normal function of the respective area.

Broca's Area is in the left frontal lobe. Damage leads to nonfluent aphasia where people with this damage can understand speech, but are unable to produce language in either writing or verbally depending on the severity of the case. This tells us that Broca's area deals with speech production. Aphasia is the general term for a disruption in language. Wernicke's Area is located in the left posterior superior temporal gyrus. Damage leads to fluent aphasia where language production is intact, but the speech does not make sense. People may feel like what they are saying is correct, but they do not actually say much of meaning because they words do not follow the normal rules of language. This tells us that Wernicke's Area is involved in understanding speech.

manner of production

HOW airflow is restricted ex: do, new (hold nose and say "new" and it sounds like do) also sap vs tap, airflows out of mouth for sap and is stopped for tap

image-scanning procedure

Kosslyn et al. 1978 -create mental map and move dot from place to place

What are some limitations of both the prototype and exemplar theories in determining what belongs to a category? B. Describe evidence that children think of something deeper than prototype or exemplar in their concepts.

Limitations of both the prototype and exemplar theories in determining what belongs to a category include the idea that typicality and judgements of category membership do not always match. We use prototypes and exemplars to determine if something beglong to a category, however, sometimes these prototypes and exemplars fail us and we use a sense of priority of some objects to regard them as better members to a category, despite the knowledge that they are all technically members. An example of this was when Armstrong et al., had people judge the even-ness of numbers and consistently found that 2, for example, is an even-er number than 106. The typicality of the number 2 gives it priority over 106 and makes it seem to be a better category member even though 106 is just as rightfully an even number. B. Children think of something deeper than prototype or exemplar in their concepts because they thought that manufactured things are able to be changed into something else entirely, whereas naturally occurring things, such as animals, are unable to be changed into a different animal. Keil saw that if children used a prototype or exemplar they could see an animal that acts and looks like a raccoon and categorize it (falsely) as a raccoon. However, children knew that an actual raccoon must also be genetically a raccoon with raccoon parents, so an animal like a skunk cannot be turned into a raccoon with changes in its behavior or appearance. The children did not just use prototypes or exemplars, because they correctly understood the deeper requirements of being a particular animal to categorize it.

What does neuropsychological evidence suggest about the equivalence/overlap of perception and imagery?

Neuropsychological evidence suggests that perception and imagery use similar mechanisms so the activities can prime each other. -Farah (1985) had people visualize an H or a T, then, and H or T was actually presented to the participants. If the person had been visualizing the letter and it was shown, it was easier to visualize the letter. -Binocular rivalry also showed how imagery can prime perception (Pearson et al. 2011). People could only focus on one visual stimulus at a time if different stimuli are presented to different eyes. If you then visualize one stimulus (green horizontal lines) and take another binocular rivalry test, that one stimulus you had primed made that stimulus dominate in the second test. Neuro-evidence: -Researchers found that different areas of the occipital lobe are involved in visual perception, such as V1 and V2, which are used when inspecting a mental image and are also very active whenever participants are maintaining highly detailed images in their head (Behrmann, 2000; Kosslyn & Thompson, 2003) -researchers could figure out what people were visualizing based on neuroimaging data -TMS temporarily inactivated V1 and this causes problems not just in vision, but also in visual imagery

What is a phoneme? Describe the three features of the vocal tract that distinguish phonemes, and provide examples of phonemes that vary in each of these features. Describe categorical perception, and provide evidence of how it works for one of these features. After class: Describe two differences in phoneme boundaries between English in two different languages.

Phonemes are the smallest unit of sound that can distinguish words in a language. Manner of production distinguishes phonemes by the way airflow is restricted or moves through certain places like one's nose vs mouth. Letters like 'P' require the stoppage of airflow whereas an 'F' needs airflow to produce the correct sound. Second, voicing distinguishes phonemes. Voicing describes the buzzing vibrations produced by vocal folds. A 'Z' is voiced and an 'S' is unvoiced. Lastly, place of articulation deals with where airflow is stopped. A 'P' is bilabial because it requires one to close her/his lips to create the sound. Categorical perception is the idea that people are much more easily able to tell the differences between categories of sounds than they are at distinguishing between difference in vibrations within the same category. Using voicing as the feature, categorical perception can be better understood. 'S' is unvoiced whereas 'Z' is voiced. However, words, such as bags and pills, have the phoneme 'S' as its distinguishing characteristic despite the fact that the pronunciation of the words actually makes the phoneme be said more as a 'Z'. However, using categorical perception we instead notice the difference between words like zoo and soup because one distinguishing phenome between the two words are the first letter (the S vs the Z). One does not notice that pills and bags make the phoneme appear more Z-like than S-like because the we know the phoneme is the 'S' and we don't notice such distinctions within that category, such as it actually appearing more Z-like.

Describe the prototype theory of categorization. Describe the evidence for this theory

Prototype theory is a theory of categorization that uses a prototype, the average of the various members in a category, to which an object or stimulus will be compared. One's conceptual knowledge of an object is based on this prototype.

How do visual and spatial imagery differ? Describe neurological evidence that supports the view that perception and imagery are separate processes. How might this evidence help to explain individual differences in imagery ability?

Visual and spatial imagery differ as seen by studies with blind people who were found to have normal imagery. Because they do not use visual imagery, they instead use spatial imagery to for mental pictures. This suggests that people with intact vision have the ability to use both visual and spatial imagery. -neuroevidence: fMRI data show us that different brain areas are activated for visual vs spatial imagery (Thompson et al. 2009) Evidence that perception and imagery are separate processes include Thompson's et al (2009) experiment where different brain areas are activated for visual vs spatial imagery. Visual imagery needs the brain area involved in vision, so damage to this area causes problems with vision and imagery. However, spatial imagery uses different brain regions so spatial imagery is not affected by brain damage in this area, only visual imagery would be affected. Additionally, vision will not be affected because the brain areas involved in this imagery are not the same as those involved in vision. -This can explain individual differences in imagery ability because, based on the development, ability, or activation of specific brain areas, certain people may be better or worse at visual imagery, spatial imagery, or both depending on how their brain's are.

place of articulation

WHERE airflow is restricted ex: pail, tail, kale vs bot, dot, cot

causal schema

a schema about what would cause something to happen -a set of beliefs or attributions we make about the causes and effects of an object/event ex: lion and gazelle with an enzyme

how does categorical perception work?

anatomy of nose, mouth, throat...

orregularization errors

apply rule too broadly -I seed that -Three fishes -I amn't but good bc shows that at 3 years they know the rules and 95% of time they are right as found out by statistical regularities

Rosch's prototype theory

average of all objects lead to a prototype (must be the typical member of a category) -prototype is the representation -graded membership=inclusion based on similarity to prototype -fuzzy boundaries=no defining properties

connectionist networks- double dissociate evidence

brain lesion patients: -some have trouble naming animals but good at naming artifacts (tools) -some have trouble naming artifacts, but good at naming animals suggests 2 dif brain areas 1 representing artifacts and 1 representing animals (Damasio et al. 1996)

family resemblance and centrality vs gradient

by wittgenstein -said members related without sharing all properties -centrality=some members are better examples (robin vs ostrich) -gradient=some categories have degrees of membership (ex lie- some are good some are bad, what is a lie)

concepts

central to human reasoning, but are complex -fast judgement: use prototypes and exemplar -more time to think: use theories=represented by networks

Wittgenstein

classical view: -before prototype/exemplar theory -definitions of sport, game, bachelor do not fit with how people actually think of them -said we assess category membership by family resemblance

function morphemes

convey info about relationships among words and about the syntactic structure of a sentence -ex: he (pronouns), the, -ed

brain area for naming animals?

infero-temporal activation

boundary extension

is spatial, not visual -most people extend boundaries, illustrating that schemas fill in details surrounding what we actually perceive (Intrub)

does early learning involve prototypes or exemplars?

it involves exemplars -experience leads to many exemplars that can be averaged to get a prototype then you can use both

brain area for naming artifacts?

lateral occipital activation

critical period of learning content morphemes

no critical period

garden-path sentence

parse one way, but have to rethink ex: Because he ran the second mile went quickly -minimal attachement=1st we choose the simplest phrase structure then may have to reevaluate

sentence parsing

process of assigning words to a phrase structure

semantics

refers to the meaning of morphemes, words, propositions -propositions=smallest unit that has truth value---same proposition with different semantics ex: syntax specific vs paraphrasing

syntax

rules to order words -prescriptive grammar ("Don't say ain't) -descriptive grammar (what people actually say) -phrase structure rules to put everything together

limitations of prototype theory

similarity depends on context (Tversky) -if we look at faces and A and C stay the same but B changed, A people change to C even though they are the same

morphemes

smallest unit of meaning in a language -content morphemes vs functional morphemes

connectionist networks

start from brain processes, work toward mental processes -distributed processing=pattern of activation across various nodes -parallel processing=many nodes active at the same time to produce an effect

propositional networks

starting from mental processes, working toward how brain works (localist) -cats have hearts=2 links -cats have claws=1 link so reaction time varies

categorical perception

the ability to make a clear distinction between phonemes based on input that is an acoustic continuum "ahhhh sound vs aye sound"

speech segmentation

the ability to slice the stream of incoming language into appropriate segments

degrees of rotation

the more rotated (the higher the angle) the longer time it takes to determine if the objects are the same

phoneme

the smallest unit of sound that can distinguish words ex: pit, pat, put, putt, pot, pet, pete

what are concepts based on?

they are based on naive theories (explanation of how the world works that arise with out formal instruction -Keil's 1986 study with raccoons and toasters

what do definitions tell us?

they tell us the essence of an object, event, person -is this necessary or sufficient?

Rosch's development of prototype theory

used centrality vs gradient as a base

privilege the basic level of what?

we privilege the basic level of categories (what children learn first, adults use most commonly, but we move towards the subordinate category as expertise grows) -some category members (prototypes) are privileged

pragmatics

what is understood without being said Q: What happened to the meat? A: Well, the dog sure looks happy!

voicing

when vocal cords start vibrating ex: bat vs pat -voice onset time=time between release burst and beginning of vowel ex: can say b in bug without thinking of the vowel right after it so it influences how you can the b sound