Organization of Knowledge

Question 1

explain procedural knowledge

Answer 1

knowing how to follow procedural steps for performing an action

Question 2

what is a concept?

Answer 2

an idea of something that provides the means for understanding the world

Question 3

what is a category and how does it relate to concepts?

Answer 3

it is a hierarchy of concepts; a category is a concept with members

Question 4

characteristics of a category

Answer 4

a group sharing common features
is similar to a prototype

Question 5

what are schemas?

Answer 5

frameworks used to organize concepts

Question 6

explain natural categories

Answer 6

groupings that occur naturally in the world

Question 7

explain artifact categories

Answer 7

groupings that are designed or invented by humans to serve particular purposes/functions

Question 8

explain ad-hoc categories

Answer 8

temporary goal-driven grouping of items

Question 9

feature-based concepts

Answer 9

these components define a concept. when lacking 1 feature, it does not belong

Question 10

some concepts do not readily lend themselves to featural analysis. there is difficulty to specify necessary features of some concepts. so instead…

Answer 10

not all defining features have to be shared as long as the category members do resemble each other in some way

Question 11

explain typicality effect

Answer 11

some things are better examples of a concept than others

Question 12

explain prototype

Answer 12

• categories are made by comparing them to idealized mental representation
• a concept is compared with the classical example to see if they belong to a category
• abstract average of all the objects in the category we previously have encountered

Question 13

something that is crucial for prototypes but not necessary

Answer 13

characteristic features

Question 14

psychologists differentiate two kinds of concepts

Answer 14

classical and fuzzy

Question 15

what are classical concepts?

Answer 15

categories that can be readily defined through defining features

Question 16

what are fuzzy concepts?

Answer 16

categories that aren’t so easily defined

Question 17

what are exemplars?

Answer 17

• typical representatives of a category
• actual, specific examples of items in a category you’ve encountered before and stored in memory
• comparisons are made to a personal library of examples

Question 18

what is the theory-based view of categorization?

Answer 18

• people understand and categorize concepts in terms of general ideas they have regarding those concepts
• organize and understand categories based on our broader knowledge and beliefs about how the world works
• includes reasoning beyond surface level

Question 19

semantic-network models

Answer 19

• suggests that knowledge is represented in our minds in the form of concepts that are connected with each-other in a web-like form (collins’ and quillian’s)
• elements are connected with each other through links

Question 20

the elements are called []; they are typically concepts. the connections between the nodes are labeled []

Answer 20

nodes; relationships

Question 21

the relationships in the semantic-network models usually indicate…

Answer 21

category membership, attributes, or some other semantic relationship

Question 22

a hierarchical model provides a high degree of [] which allows for maximally efficient capacity use with a minimum of redundancy

Answer 22

cognitive economy

Question 23

define cognitive economy

Answer 23

• the idea that the brain stores shared info only once at the most general level possible to save mental resources
• stored once at the highest general node

Question 24

define the concept of inheritance

Answer 24

implies that lower level items inherit properties of the higher level items

Question 25

collins and loftus semantic-knowledge model

Answer 25

concepts are connected by links, but the strength of the links vary depending on how closely related the concepts are

Question 26

explain spreading activation in collins & loftus' model

Answer 26

when one concept is activated, the activation spreads to related concepts based on the strength of the links

Question 27

recall: a schema is a framework for organizing knowledge. they are similar to semantic networks except that schemas are more []

Answer 27

task-oriented

Question 28

differentiate schemas and semantic networks

Answer 28

semantic networks: connection between abstract concepts schemas: practical frameworks for interpreting real world experiences

Question 29

what is a script?

Answer 29

it is a kind of schema. contains info about the particular order in which things occur

Question 30

procedural knowledge representation is acquired by...

Answer 30

practicing the implementation of a procedure

Question 31

psychologists have developed a variety of models for how procedural information is represented and processed. each of these models involves the [] of info

Answer 31

serial processing

Question 32

explain serial processing of information

Answer 32

* information is handled through a linear sequence of operations * performed in specific sequence

Question 33

mental representations of non-declarative knowledge

Answer 33

procedural knowledge associative conditioning (classical and operant conditioning) non-associative conditioning habituation and sensitization priming

Question 34

impairments in procedural knowledge

Answer 34

damage to basal ganglia