Learning and Memory Chapter 9

What are some examples of embodied semantics?

- Abstract concepts (rely more on thematic relations) - Visually larger elements responded to faster - Right and left handed thinking (positive and negative concepts: i.e. gesture more with right hand about things you like, and vice versa with left) - Task to say whether a second word was a property of the first

Name 2 reasons why we categorize.

- Allows us to predict our environment - Allows us to spend less time and effort thinking

What is the difference between a concept and a category?

Concept = Contains info associated with an idea Category = A class of concepts to which a set of assertions applies

Does repeating an idea increase priming? (Hint - short vs. long periods of time)

Over short periods, YES (up to 10 seconds) Over long periods, NO (longer than 10 seconds)

What is the semantic distance effect?

People respond faster and more accurately the further apart two items are on a continuum. i.e. easier to say that a mouse is smaller than a horse, than that a dog is smaller than a sheep.

What is a schema?

Semantic memory that captures commonly encountered aspects of life.

What are the 5 primary schema processes?

(encoding) 1. Selection: used to sort out which things are likely to be central, and which are peripheral (schemas select our which elements are important) - i.e. in baseball, the concept of time is irrelevant to the game because it is measured in innings, not by a clock 2. Abstraction: involves converting the surface form of information into a more abstract representation that captures the underlying meaning. - i.e. sentences: you hear them and comprehend them, but after a couple minutes, you won't be able to distinguish a verbatim sentence from a paraphrased one 3. Interpretation: allows people to fill in the gaps for things that were missed - i.e. when you watch a movie and see someone get on a plane, then get off a minute later in that movie, you assume that there was an actual flight in the plot, and that she didn't just turn around and get right off (using schemas to know what happens on a plane and fill in those gaps that you didn't see) 4. Integration: guides us in putting pieces together into a coherent whole - i.e. when reading a mystery novel, author may give different aspects of murder at different points in the story, but to figure out what happens, you must put all of these pieces together to determine that (retrieval) 5. Reconstruction: how people fill in memory gaps - similar to interpretation, but this has to do with retrieval instead of encoding - i.e. paleontologist reconstructing an entire creature from fossilized bits and pieces

What are some problems with the classical view of categorization?

- Not all categories have defining features (i.e. not one defining feature that makes a chair a chair) - Category membership is graded (i.e. robins are great birds, penguins are not usually great birds) - Ambiguous cases (i.e. what is a pencil? is it a tool or not?)

What is an explanation-based view of categorization?

- People try to have reasons for why things should be grouped together; where categories are theories or explanations. - Based on implicit, naïve theory of how the world works. - Feature similarity is insufficient (similarity guides structure, from which a theory is derived) - Similarity includes attributes, relations and higher order relations. - Properties are not independent - Concepts are more than a set of features

Name four examples for how semantic memories are emergent and contextualized.

- Sum of our long-term experiences (i.e. when we're talking about lemons, your thoughts will include all your encounters/experiences with lemons) - Biased by our recent experiences (i.e. when talking about lemons, if you recently used lemons to make lemonade, that recent experience is going to influence the way you think about that concept more generally) - Context and the current task (i.e. how you think about lemon is going to influence you as a function of where you're at in the grocery store) - Current mental state (i.e. you're more likely to think about lemons if you were recently talking about limes)

What is a script?

- Temporally ordered schema that is structured according to the major components of an event and how it normally plays out

What is an extramission view of vision?

- Vision works by light entering the eye and being absorbed by photoreceptors (rods & cones) - A large number (33-86%, depending on the measure) of college-educated people believe that vision involves emissions from the eye

What is categorization? What does it allow us to do?

A system of grouping in which we group knowledge together based on similarities, rather than remembering lots of bits and pieces of information. This allows us to draw on prior experience in a regular and reliable fashion in new situations.

Priming reflects what type of semantic structure?

Abstract semantic structure

Define two classes of categories.

Artifact categories are things people make (graded membership is more evident in artifact categories). Natural kind categories are things that are found in nature.

What are two types of semantic priming? What is the difference in when each occurs?

Automatic priming: initial priming and most priming thereafter is automatic Controlled priming: under some circumstances, priming is controlled - Activation with respect to a goal - Starts after an initial automatic component

What is the classical view of categorization? Is this how we naturally classify things in the world?

Based on biological categorization methods Category members share some characteristics, with deviation on nonessential ones - Fundamental ones are necessary (in that those features must be present) and sufficient (in that, as long as they are present, something is a member of a category) - There are logical rules of category assignment - NO, not how we classify things in the world.

Why does semantic priming occur?

Because concepts are not understood insolation, but in the ways that they are related to one another. By activating related concepts, people bring to bear a larger set of knowledge to help them understand and think.

Define some of the features of categories.

Categories exhibit a central tendency, or averaged category ideal. Categories have graded membership, when some members of a category are thought to be better representations of that category than other members. Family resemblance is when different features may be shared among several category instances. (i.e. many pieces of furniture have legs, but not all pieces. this feature creates a family resemblance between certain members of this category).

What is the difference between concrete and action semantic information?

Concrete - Have more taxonomic relations - Nouns activate more sensory cortex Action - Have more thematic relations - Verbs activate more motor cortex

What is semantic memory?

Encyclopedic, general world knowledge Stable knowledge shared with others Allows us to take advantage of regularities in the world to make more accurate predictions about what will happen next.

How does episodic memory differ from semantic memory, in terms of how associations/connections affect memory retrieval? Why does this occur?

Episodic memory - associations slow down retrieval time (i.e. fan effect) Semantic memory - concepts that have more interconnections are retrieved faster. This happens because in semantic memory, connections can be direct OR indirect. This causes many more retrieval pathways to be functional between concepts (which is NOT the case for episodic memory).

Give an example to explain our problems with understanding devices.

Ex: Many people treat a thermostat not for setting the ideal temperature but as a heat accelerator

True or false: More brain activity is being observed with primed concepts.

FALSE - less brain activity

True or false: People misremember information in an order that less closely corresponds to the script.

FALSE - more closely corresponds to the script

Fill in the blank: There is a preference for using script information in a _____________ order.

Forward

What is something used in both episodic and semantic memory that can be used to help narrow a memory search to the appropriate part of semantic memory? How?

Inhibition

What is mediated priming?

Mediated priming is the idea that some words prime other words, though indirectly. This is priming that is done only through the activation of a connecting term. i.e. "Lion" primes "stripes", and "stripes" primes "tiger". So, mediated priming occurs between "lion" and "tiger" because of the middle term of "stripes", but "lion" does not prime "tiger" on its own.

Do people recall more or less accurately if the schema or script is discredited?

More accurately

People take (less time OR more time) to read information that is widely separated in a script.

More time

Fill in the blank: Semantic memory carries ideas of _______________.

Order

What is psychological essentialism?

People act as if things have common underlying essences (something about their nature makes them what they are). Theories like essences and surface features (a view of not how the world is, but how we interpret the world) i.e. nothing about a tool makes it a tool; it's all about how it's used.

What is the Galileo bias?

People mistakenly believe that two balls of different weights, dropped from 10 meters, will hit the ground simultaneously if released at the same time. - This does not take into account wind resistance - Errors based on prior semantic knowledge, with more educated people making more errors

What is the serial position effect?

People respond faster and more accurately to items near the ends of a continuum, rather than items in the middle. i.e. easier to say that a rat is larger than a mouse than that a sheep is larger than a dog.

What are the two probabilistic views of categorization?

Probabilistic views = derived from probabilistic understanding of co-occurrences; central tendency and family resemblance are also present. 1. Prototype view: when categories are determined by a mental representation of what we think is an average of all category members (prototype). - centered around the best example (central tendency) - but, most categories do not have a real-world prototype - prototype = idealized object - category decisions are based on how "close" an instance is to the prototype. 2. Exemplar view: All category examples are stored in memory, and categories are an average of all examples in memory. - sensitive to frequency and central tendency information.

Explain the problems with both types of probabilistic views.

Problem with the prototype view: - prototypes only convey central tendency; not category size, variability, or correlated attributes. Problems with the exemplar view: - categories are context sensitive (i.e. gray is a mix between two colors, but is it more similar to white or black? depends on context: clouds or hair?) - ad-hoc categories are similar to regular categories (i.e. pets, children, photographs, money all fit nicely into the category of what to take out of a burning building) ***these categories are created on the fly but has all the characteristics of normal categories (i.e. central tendency, variability, etc.) - no account of levels of categorization (doesn't tell us why we prefer things at the basic level, as opposed to super/subordinate levels) - why do we make the categories we do, as opposed to grouping things in the world in different ways? - circularity problem: are things in a category because they are similar? or similar because they are in a category?

What types of concepts might be inhibited in semantic memory?

Related, but unwanted concepts.

What is the semantic congruity effect?

Responses are better when a comparison term matches the end of a continuum that two items are on. i.e. "a mouse is smaller than a rabbit" is easier to recognize than "a rabbit is larger than a mouse" **because "large" doesn't really describe rabbit; only in comparison with a mouse.

Name the some problems with semantic memory.

Semantic processing is very general - People make a partial assessment of semantic memory - Similar sounding words can make things more confusing Knowing too much can also cause problems

What is the SNARC effect?

Spatial-Numerical Association of Response Codes - this is the phenomenon that, when people made judgments about numbers, judgments about smaller numbers were made faster with the left hand, while judgments about larger numbers were made faster with the right hand. - also observed in related cases, such as musical notes (i.e. lower notes faster with left hand and higher notes faster with right hand)

What are the three levels of categorization? Explain each one.

Superordinate - Provides very general information that captures a wide range of basic-level categories - i.e. pet, furniture, instrument Basic - This is the level at which we operate most often - Level where things are defined by features that provide enough detail to treat different members as similar BUT without providing more detail than is often necessary. - i.e. dog, chair, or drum Subordinate - Provides detailed information about more specific portions of a basic category. - i.e. miniature poodle, leather recliner, kettle drum

True or false: Concepts in semantic memory are not stable and fixed, they are fluid and dynamic.

TRUE

What is the difference between taxonomic and thematic relations?

Taxonomic relations focus on shared features between items (i.e. chickens, pigs, and sheep have the shared feature of all being farm animals). - These have slower activation. Thematic relations focus on co-occurrence, but do not necessarily involve any shared feature (i.e. dogs and leashes go together because they are often used in in the same context; however, dogs and leashes don't have much in common in and of themselves). - These have faster activation

What are semantic illusions? What is an example of one?

The Moses Illusion is observed in asking the question "how many animals of each kind did Moses take on the ark?", and the response being 2. This is incorrect because Moses did not take any animals onto an ark: NOAH did. This illusion occurs, not because of mentally correcting the question or rushed responses, but because there is overlapping lexical information (such as a similar name)

What is priming?

The facilitation of related ideas When a concept is activated, this activation spreads to related concepts (now closer to conscious awareness and can be used more readily).

How would a typical priming study work?

There are pairs of words: a critical item (called a prime), which is then followed by a target. The goal is to study how fast people respond to the target. (If the prime is unrelated to the target, that is the control condition. If the prime is semantically related to the target, that is the experimental condition).

What are naïve physics?

When we consciously try to apply physical principles in the world (such as gravity or friction), misunderstandings can arise. - People have lots of experience with physical motion - Principles should be easily derived and stored in semantic memory - However, for explicit predictions, errors are made