Chapter 5 Flashcards
(37 cards)
Conceptual knowledge
knowledge about the kinds of things in the world. This is not only
about knowledge about objects, but also about actions, events, and mental states.
Conceptual development consists of..
consists of inductive learning and categorization.
What plays a role in categorization?
Perceptual information, conceptual information and beliefs
How does Neisser describe categorization?
the ability to treat a set of things as equal, to put
them in the same pile, to call them the same, or to respond to them in the same way
prototype theory
the theory that the normal
level of a category (basic level) gives us the most information about what something is and
how it should be classified
Eimas & Quinn (1994) about 3-4 month old infants experiment with zebras and horses.
conclusion: infants looked at the other animals longer. This shows that they can see the difference between the prototype
of a horse and that of another animal.
However, children do not show spontaneous sorting behaviour before the age of eighteen
months. As a sign of categorization, they use sequential touching. They touch objects that
belong to a certain category in sequence, so first all cars and then all horses. Mandler and
Bauer (1988) investigated this at a basic level (cat and car) and at a superordinate level
(animal and vehicle)
12 vs 15 vs 20 months old
Twelve and fifteen-month-old infants distinguished only through
sequential touch on a basic level. Only infants aged 20 months made a distinction at
superordinate level.
There were many individual differences, for example, that 25% of the twelve-month-old
infants were responsive to the superordinate level. In a follow-up experiment, they showed
that basic level categories were easily distinguished from each other if they belonged to two
different superordinate categories, but more difficult if they belonged to the same
superordinate category. Superordinate classification therefore plays a larger role than was
thought.
implication of the study of Mandlr and Bauer about sequential touching.
Perceptual context that items from the same superordinate class are more difficult to distinguish from each other. a car and an animal are easy om uit elkaar te houden, twee dieren niet.
What does it mean when Rosch stated that perceptual equality correlates with structural equality?
. The perceptual equality between dogs and horses
represents an underlying structural equality, namely that they are both organisms. Basic
level and superordinate concepts stem from perceptual knowledge.
Pauen’s study where she manipulated objects and let infants hold these objects (ginving eyes to furniture)
Yet infants
spent more time looking at an item from a new category than at an item from a familiar category. So, they used their previous knowledge of categories to determine in which
category these objects belonged.
matching-to-sample test and > 19 months old children, conclusion about basic and super ordinate
Children were slightly better in basic-level objects, but they also scored
very well on super-ordinate objects
Rosch argued that categorization starts at …
the basic level and then develops into
categorization at the superordinate and subordinate level. However, different studies indicate
something else.
For example, only kids aged above 31 months old could distinguish on basic level with touching.
Quinn’s theory: global to basic sequence (
e (first global categorization
and then basic level). This theory is based on perception. It derives from connectionist
modelling.
connectionist modellling
This is a mathematical model of learning via neural networks. Every unit in the
network has an output that is a simple numerical function of its input. Cognitive skills, such
as language, are represented by patterns of activity at different units. Information therefore
enters the input nodes and relevant information about identifying characteristics is filtered
and passed on to the output nodes. So, it starts with global categorization, but during
learning, more and more nodes are being developed that will distinguish between multiple
details. This makes categorization on a basic level possible. The more of these nodes
develop, the more categorization takes place at the basic level and ultimately this is
preferred.
Quinn, Westerlund and Nelson (2006) contrasted pictures of cats with pictures of dogs, a
basic level distinction, in the first ever study of neural markers of infant categorization. EEG
was recorded as six-month-olds watched a series of 18 different pictures of cats, and then
were shown either more cat pictures, or some dog pictures. Quinn and his colleagues
reported a novel ERP.. the Nc what is that?
the Nc (a negative central component), related to viewing the novel
category (dogs). Therefore, for the basic level of categorization, a distinct neural marker
appears to be associated with categorical discrimination.
prototype
A prototype is an example from a category that is considered to be very representative of
that category
How important is the emphasises of prototyping in categorization?
Furthermore, the
degree of prototyping explained a larger part of the variance than age or level of
categorization in a study of Bauer et al, where they investigated whether prototypes play a role in
categorization and made use of the sequential touching measurement..
multi-voxel pattern analysis
(MVPA)
In these studies, the voxels (small cubic regions of the brain, typically
containing thousands of neurons) that are reliably activated by certain concepts are studied.
The spatial activation patterns across voxels differ for different concepts, so brain activity can
be sued to classify cognitive activity – activation of one group of voxels may reliably signify thinking about a cat.
Some of the behavioural data discussed so far has been quite
contradictory. Why??
One reason for this contradiction may be that the infant brain is attending to aspects of the
stimuli that haven’t yet been considered by experimenters (and therefore not controlled for in
a stimulus set). The features of a stimulus which a child or infant considers important and
assigns the greatest weight in computing similarity and making inductive inferences could be
different from those features used by an adult
Since children experience concepts different from adults, different parts of the brain are
therefore activated. Mervis et al. (1987) named this ‘child-basic categories’
They are
opposed to adult-basic categories. The child-basic categories can ensure that children focus
on different basic level categories than adults. Those categories can be broader or narrower
or can overlap. They studied the categorization of a child with regard to ducks. This
categorization changed slowly. First it only contained pictures of ducks, then a duck rattle
and then a plush duck head rattle and Donald Duck. Then the child saw ducks in many more
instances than his mother, such as in a swan-shaped soap.
Bertenhl study with point light walker displays for children to see difference to see difference between living and non living object.
infants of what age?
e. Infants of nine months old only dishabituated for
the ‘real’ videos, which were not manipulated. This suggests that they are sensitive to
biological movement. In a follow-up experiment, Bertenhal discovered that this was due to
an implicit detection of the person’s body, because this effect was not found when the films
were shown upside dow
Lamfuss study with children aged 4 and 5 and the lines of a non-biological concept
The lines of movement of a non-biological concept are predictable, in contrast to
those of an organism. Lamsfuss (1995) showed that children aged 4 and 5 years old
understand this by showing them two tracks (irregular and regular) and asking which one
probably belonged to an animal and which one belonged to a machine. Children chose the
regular track with a machine and the irregular track with an organism significantly more
often.
Another way to explore the understanding of biological and non-biological concepts is to see
if children recognize that biological concepts can move on their own. Massey and R. Gelman
(1988) showed children pictures of living and non-living objects and asked them whether or
not these objects could move up and down a hill on their own. Unknown pictures were
shown of mammals (marmoset), of non-mammals (tarantula), and exemplars of three
inanimate categories; statues of animals, of objects with wheels (bicycle; which can only go
down a mountain but not up a mountain) and of complex rigid objects (a camera).
Children
aged 3 years made good decisions about the pictures in 78% of the cases and children aged
4 years in 90% of the cases. They often focused on legs and feet. If an object did have feet
(as with the statues), the children ignored the feet because the objects could not move. The
3-year-olds made the most mistakes with non-mammals but realized that they were animals:
for example, they said that a tarantula was too small to be able to climb the mountain.
what did the study by Gelman and Gottfried (1993) show about the distinction between animals and other objects?
showed that children of 4 years old already
make a distinction between animals and other objects: animals can move themselves and
toys and objects can only move with the help of an external force or person.
