Lecture 7.1 Flashcards
a _____ is a set of things we group together
category
a ____ is a mental representation
concept
when we study how people retain info, we study their ________ learning
conceptual
what are concepts for?
- memory
- communication
- inference
- reasoning
what is a concept?
information that belongs to a general category or group; units bear some “family resemblance” to one another
what does the picture verification task measure?
to what degree items fit categories & are part of the prototype view of a concept
what is the prototype view?
the average of all the exemplars you’ve seen
what is the difference between a prototype and an exemplar?
a prototype is a collection (average) of things you’ve seen before.
an exemplar is a number of items that fit a certain description
when asked to name a list of fruits, which three would be the first output?
apple, banana, orange. people generally recall stronger exemplars first. typicality effects are strong.
what does it mean to say that concepts are “fuzzy”?
concepts are rapidly expanding. definitions & boundaries are fuzzy, so we must accommodate new members by relying on exemplars
how do we use scripts to organize memories?
scripts dictate what we ~expect~ will happen in a certain situation; scripts allow us to FIT events into schemas that we already have
what did Bartlett’s study on “A Native American Legend” find?
- retellings got shorter & more concise
- cultural differences in recall
- schema-incongruent info is lost
why is schema-incongruent information often lost?
you can’t tie it to knowledge that you already have
when asked to recall what was in the photo of an office, why do people recall books?
based on your schemas, they’re what you’d expect to see in an office. you organize learning based on prior knowledge!
how do schemas lead to intrusions?
we naturally fill in details to aid comprehension; these details may end up in memory
