Cognitive Psychology: Investigating Knowledge Organization

Organization of Knowledge in the Mind

• Investigating cognitive psychology involves understanding how we organize knowledge in our minds.
• Declarative knowledge refers to "what" (e.g., facts, concepts, and relationships), while procedural knowledge refers to "how" (e.g., skills, procedures, and actions).

Declarative Knowledge

• Concept: an idea about something that provides a means of understanding the world, which can change over time.
• Category: a group of items that belong together due to shared features or similarity to a prototype.
  • Natural categories: occur naturally in the world (e.g., birds, trees).
  • Artifact categories: designed and invented by humans to serve a particular purpose (e.g., chairs, cars).

Semantic-Network Models

• Knowledge is represented in our minds as concepts connected in a web-like form.
• Collins and Quillian's (1969) network model: a hierarchical semantic network with nodes (concepts) and labeled relationships (links) between them.
• Nodes can be connected through category membership, attributes, or other semantic relationships.

Schemas

• A mental framework for organizing knowledge, creating a meaningful structure of related concepts.
• Characteristics of schemas:
  • Can include other schemas.
  • Encompass typical, general facts that can vary slightly from one specific instance to another.
  • Can vary in degree of abstraction.
  • Can include information about relationships between concepts, attributes, and contexts.

Scripts

• A specific kind of schema that contains information about the particular order in which things occur.
• Features of scripts:
  • Props: objects involved in the event.
  • Roles: actors involved in the event.
  • Opening conditions: requirements for the script to start.
  • Scenes: sequences of events.
  • Results: outcomes of the event.

Procedural Knowledge

• Models for representing procedural knowledge involve serial processing of information, following a linear sequence of operations.
• Production rules: "if-then" rules that govern a procedure, with an "if" clause specifying conditions and a "then" clause specifying actions.
• Routines and subroutines: organized structures of rules for implementing tasks and subtasks.

Non-Declarative Knowledge

• Non-declarative knowledge encompasses a broader range of mental representations, including:
  • Procedural knowledge (skills, motor, and cognitive skills).
  • Simple associative knowledge (classical and operant conditioning).
  • Simple non-associative knowledge (habituation and sensitization).
  • Priming (fundamental links within a knowledge network).

Integrative Models

• Parallel processing (connectionist models): handling large numbers of cognitive operations simultaneously through a network distributed across the brain.
• Networks represent all forms of knowledge, with nodes connected to many other nodes, enabling the organization of meaningfully related knowledge.

Organization of Knowledge in the Mind

• Investigating cognitive psychology involves understanding how we organize knowledge in our minds.
• Declarative knowledge refers to "what" (e.g., facts, concepts, and relationships), while procedural knowledge refers to "how" (e.g., skills, procedures, and actions).

Declarative Knowledge

• Concept: an idea about something that provides a means of understanding the world, which can change over time.
• Category: a group of items that belong together due to shared features or similarity to a prototype.
  • Natural categories: occur naturally in the world (e.g., birds, trees).
  • Artifact categories: designed and invented by humans to serve a particular purpose (e.g., chairs, cars).

Semantic-Network Models

• Knowledge is represented in our minds as concepts connected in a web-like form.
• Collins and Quillian's (1969) network model: a hierarchical semantic network with nodes (concepts) and labeled relationships (links) between them.
• Nodes can be connected through category membership, attributes, or other semantic relationships.

Schemas

• A mental framework for organizing knowledge, creating a meaningful structure of related concepts.
• Characteristics of schemas:
  • Can include other schemas.
  • Encompass typical, general facts that can vary slightly from one specific instance to another.
  • Can vary in degree of abstraction.
  • Can include information about relationships between concepts, attributes, and contexts.

Scripts

• A specific kind of schema that contains information about the particular order in which things occur.
• Features of scripts:
  • Props: objects involved in the event.
  • Roles: actors involved in the event.
  • Opening conditions: requirements for the script to start.
  • Scenes: sequences of events.
  • Results: outcomes of the event.

Procedural Knowledge

• Models for representing procedural knowledge involve serial processing of information, following a linear sequence of operations.
• Production rules: "if-then" rules that govern a procedure, with an "if" clause specifying conditions and a "then" clause specifying actions.
• Routines and subroutines: organized structures of rules for implementing tasks and subtasks.

Non-Declarative Knowledge

• Non-declarative knowledge encompasses a broader range of mental representations, including:
  • Procedural knowledge (skills, motor, and cognitive skills).
  • Simple associative knowledge (classical and operant conditioning).
  • Simple non-associative knowledge (habituation and sensitization).
  • Priming (fundamental links within a knowledge network).

Integrative Models

• Parallel processing (connectionist models): handling large numbers of cognitive operations simultaneously through a network distributed across the brain.
• Networks represent all forms of knowledge, with nodes connected to many other nodes, enabling the organization of meaningfully related knowledge.