Levels of Mental Rep (2)
- Visual
- Verbal
- for both: mem for meaning is better than memory for the actual words (verbatim/style)
- Depends on how attention is allocated – Explicit instructions – Implicit cues
- Practical implications – Cognitive economy
Nature of Meaning Based Rep
Perception vs. Abstract Ideas
Perception: Perceptual details represented
Abstract ideas
– Perceptual details are stripped away – Propositions, networks of propositions
Proposition(al Network)
Smallest unit of info that can stand alone w/ truth value – (judged as T or F)
- Words are more strongly connected in memory when they come from same proposition.
Propositional network Exps
“Children who are slow eat bread that is cold” Exp
- Studyphase:Memorize this sentence
• Test phase:Given cue X from sentence, respond with 1st word from sentence that comes to mind - Results: Ps almost always recalled cold rather than slow
- Conclusion: Connections b/t concepts in memory depend on membership in props than phys position in sentence
Semantic Network
basic assumptions
How conceptual knowledge is organized
• made up of nodes and link
- node represents a category
- link is category membership (“Is a”)
- No redundancy for cognitive economy
- Categories developed through experience. Likely to be similar across ind.
Spreading Activation in Semantic Network
- When concept encountered, nodes activated
- activation primes nearby nodes
- spreads via links
- decays w/ distance & time
Testing Semantic Activation
- Present the same prime concept with different Targets
- Target processing should be affected by its distance from prime in the network
Canary Sem Act Exp
T/F Statement verification; DV = RT for correct “True”
- A canary is a canary
- A canary is a bird.
- A canary is an animal.
W/ statement verif., pattern of RTs mirrors patterns from free assoc studies
- *Typical category members more strongly assoc w/ the category than are less typical members
- *Frequently encountered properties are stored w/ category even if they can be inferred from higher level
Schema
Highly elaborated categories w/ in semantic net –
- Many exposures to instances
- Slot structure: Attributes w/ typical “default” values
Script
- “Event Schemas”
- elaborated events w/in the semantic net
- ex: restaurant, dr. office
- Activation of a schema/script primes assoc attributes + default values
• This activation affects how we interpret/recall info (Filling/inferring details)
Schema/Script stereotype activation
- Reconstructing memories as more schema- consistent
- Info stays in foreground when relevant to current script; irrelevant falls to background
