S2 L5 - Semantic Memory Flashcards
(17 cards)
What is semantic memory?
General world knowledge including objects, people, concepts and words
How is semantic information stored in memory?
Storing representations and their relations in a more economical network
What is Collins & Quillian’s 1969 hierarchical network model?
Features that we know ab certain concepts fall into a hierarchy and subcategories
Access of concept representations through spreading activation between nodes via their connecting paths
Superordinate level - general concepts (animal)
Basic level - broad concepts (bird)
Subordinate level - items belonging to basic level (robin)
features are in that to describe the features
But this hierarchy does not account for Semantic Relatedness during retrieval of info. Hierarchy has later been replaced by semantic relatedness
now things are based on collins and loftus associative network model bc it has the semantic relatedness
How does semantic memory enable us to make predictions about what will happen next?
Because semantic memory enables us to form representations of categories (eg dog breeds or features, you know things to expect, how a dog will act) based on regularities in the world
How do we form categories?
Defining categories by necessary and sufficient features
(Classical Theory of Categorisation)
What are some criticisms of Classical Theory?
Family resemblance - Different members of a category can share different features (chair)
Doesnt account for central tendency - categories exhibit an averaged ideal
Graded Membership - some members are more typical for a category than others
birds and penguins being in birds or ostrich huge birds - many differences between them
How can we measure categorisation?
Typicality ratings - Rank the following chairs from being the best example to the worst example of a chair
(which are the most typical in the category)
Graded membership exists even for odd numbers
What is Exemplar production?
Recalling as many pieces of furniture as you can
DV is frequency of production and or position in the production
What is Category membership verification?
Is this an example of a category? furniture : carpet
dvs = accuracy of responses and/or reaction times
What is the Prototype Theory (Rosch)?
Mental representations that have a weighted average of all category members determine categories
This prototype may or may not be an actual entity
Common features: four legs, furry, tail
Distinctive features: barks, is omnivore
What can the prototype theory not explain?
How can people tell the sizes of categories?
How can people add new members to a category? (that ugly dog thing)
What is the Exemplar theory?
tries to address issues within the prototype theory
categories consist of separate, individual representations of the physical features of experienced examples of this cateogry
BUT
it cannot explain how people retrieve all category members to define a category if retrieval is based on category membership (theoretical circularity)?
says we have to have members of the category to define the category in the first place. so its circular
also cant explain how people form abstract categories of things without physical features? eg ways to make friends, ideologies of political parties
The explanation theory attempts to address criticisms of the exemplar theory and Prototype theory. what is it?
Categories are based on common causal characteristics rather than physical features.
Categories can be created ad hoc (categories created on the fly) using world knowledge and explanations
How are ad hoc categories similar to common categories?
They exhibit
family resemblance
central tendency
graded membership
(Barsalou’s 1983) experiments
High average agreement among participants regarding category membership, typicality of members, and production of exemplars
How does semantic memory form schemata that capture commonly encountered aspects of life?
(eg buying things)
Explanation based event categories
What do scripts capture?
Order of events for common areas of life.
Thought of as temporally ordered schemata
semantic memory enables this bc we form scripts based on our semantic knowledge. instead of having individual schemata for stuff we have scripts for how things will go eg going to a restaurant
What are the 5 primary schema processes?
encode > retrieve
Encode
1. Selection - selection of info central to a schema (matching preference against supply at a shop) benefits encoding of scheme-relevant information & selection of those processes at which you can identify together
- Abstraction - we are able to abstract from a particular representation into a more general/consistent item /schema consistent thing
- Interpretation -
interpretation is used to fill in the gaps in a story with schema- consistent information (schema w plate dropping on the floor)info given and our ability to interpret outcomes based on what we are presented w - Integration - integrate our representations into one schema consistent representation BASED on info we have - used to form schema-consistent holistic representations
making connection between schema-relevant info
Retrieve
5. Reconstruction - people recall stories in a schema-consistent way
