Concepts Flashcards
(21 cards)
What is a concept?
A mental representation of categories of objects, events, or ideas in the world.
What is semantic memory?
Long-term memory for meanings, facts, and world knowledge.
What is lexical semantics?
Word meanings and how they relate to conceptual knowledge.
What’s the difference between categories and concepts?
Categories are objective groupings in the world; concepts are the mind’s interpretation of those categories.
What do amodal theories of concept representation propose?
That concepts are abstract and symbolic, not tied to sensory or motor systems.
Who proposed an amodal model of semantic memory?
Tyler & Moss (2001).
What do grounded/embodied theories propose?
That concept representations are tied to sensorimotor systems.
What did Hauk et al. (2004) find?
Action words activate motor cortex regions corresponding to the body part involved.
What did Willems et al. (2010) find?
Handedness affects motor cortex activation when reading manual action words.
What did Gonzalez et al. (2006) find?
Smell-related words activate olfactory cortex.
What did Kiefer et al. (2008) find?
Sound-related words activate auditory cortex early (~150–200ms).
Criticism of embodied theories?
Hard to explain abstract or metaphorical concepts like ‘justice’.
What is the hub-and-spoke model?
A model combining modality-specific ‘spokes’ with a central ‘hub’ in the anterior temporal lobe (ATL).
What did Patterson, Nestor & Rogers (2007) find?
Semantic dementia patients regress from specific to general concepts due to ATL damage.
What did Bozeat et al. (2000) observe in drawing tasks?
Patients drew animals with missing or incorrect features, suggesting conceptual deficits.
What did Rogers et al. (2004) contribute?
Computational models showed the need for a hub to generalise across concepts.
What are the three main accounts of ATL function?
Semantic hub, unique entity store, and social processor.
What did Damasio et al. (2004) propose?
ATL stores person-specific knowledge (unique entity theory).
What did Tranel (2006) report?
ATL damage can impair naming of famous people or landmarks.
What did Zahn et al. (2007) find?
ATL activation linked to social abstract concepts like ‘courage’ and ‘generosity’.
What is the conclusion from Simmons & Martin (2009)?
The ATL may store unique social entities, with a possible bias towards social or person-specific knowledge.
