5. Semantic Memory Flashcards
(24 cards)
What is semantic memory?
- general world knowledge including objects, people, concepts and words
What is Collins & Quillian’s hierarchical network model?
- access of concept representations through spreading activation between nodes via their connecting paths
What are the levels of Collins & Quillian’s hierarchical network model?
- superordinate level: more general
- basic level
- subordinate level: specific
What is an issue with hierarchal organisation?
- does not account for semantic relatedness
- ordered on features: not how we access info
How is Collins and Loftus’ associative network model organised?
- NOT hierarchical
- semantic relatedness
What is semantic dementia?
- syndrome of progressive deterioration in semantic memory
- leads to the loss of knowledge about objects, people, concepts and words
What is the classical theory of categorisation?
- categories are defined by necessary and sufficient features
What are criticisms of the classical theory of categorisation?
family resemblance:
- different members of a category can share different features
- similarities and same function BUT look different
central tendency:
- categories exhibit an averaged ideal
- classical theory doesn’t account for this
graded membership:
- some members are more typical for a category than others
What is Rosch’s prototype theory?
- categories are determined by a mental representation that is a weighted average of all category members
- this prototype may or may not be an actual entity
- used as a mental shortcut
What are criticisms of the prototype theory?
- difficult to tell the category sizes
- can’t explain the adding of new members to a category
What is the exemplar theory?
- attempts to address issues with prototype theory: can tell category sizes and add new members
- categories consist of separate representations of the physical features of experienced examples of the category
What are criticisms of the exemplar theory?
cannot explain:
- how people retrieve all category members to define a category if retrieval is based on category membership (theoretical circulatory)
- how people form abstract categories about things without physical features e.g types of social groups
What is the explanation-based theory?
attempts to address the criticisms of the exemplar theory:
- categories are based on common causal characteristics rather than physical features
- categories can be created ad hoc (when needed) using word knowledge and explanations
What did Barsalou’s experiment into the explanation-based theory find?
- high average agreement among participants regarding category membership, typicality of members and production of exemplars
- ad hoc categories are similar to common categories in that they exhibit family resemblance, central tendency and graded membership
What are schemata?
- capture commonly encountered aspects of life
- can be thought of as explanation-based event categories
- rules: built from semantic memories
- understanding of how the world works
What are scripts?
- capture the order of events for common aspects of life
- they can be thought of as temporally ordered schemata
- ‘mental shortcuts’
What are the 5 schema processes?
encoding:
1. selection
2. abstraction
3. interpretation
4. integration
retrieval:
5. reconstruction
What is selection? (schema process)
- matching preferences against supply, quality and price
- rule for what we are doing
- identify key knowledge that we will need
What did Bransford and Johnson find in their experiment on schema-process selection?
- schema activation benefits encoding of schema-relevant information
- with no context PPs struggled to recall
- best recall when they studied the text and were given the topic before
What is abstraction? (schema process)
- the surface form of information is converted into a more abstract representation: that captures the meaning but is schema consistent
What did Johnson et al find in their experiment on schema-process interpretation?
- interpretation was used to ‘fill in the gaps’ in a story with schema consistent information
What did Branford et al find in their experiment on schema-process integration?
- integration of information is used to form schema-consistent holistic representations
- making a connection between related information
What did Bartletts experiment on schema-process reconstruction find? (retrieval)
- details were reconstructed to be simplified and fit a cultural schema
What did Brewer and Treyens experiment on schema-process reconstruction find? (retrieval)
- when PPs were asked to recall everything from an office they were in they recalled things expected to be seen in an office but wasn’t there
- such as books and a filing cabinet
- details were reconstructed to fit a schema
