30 Questions
What is conceptual knowledge?
Knowledge that enables us to recognize objects and events and to make inferences about their properties
What is a concept?
A mental representation used for a variety of cognitive functions, including the meaning of objects, events, and abstract ideas
What is categorization?
The process by which things are placed into groups called categories
Why are categories useful?
Categories help organize our knowledge of the world and provide rules for creating categories based on concepts
What affects the animals we place in a specific category?
The mental representation for the concept related to the category
What does the category 'cat' include?
Siamese cats, Persian cats, wild cats, ...
In the context of semantic networks, what is the concept of spreading activation?
The arousal level of a node
What is the criticism of the Collins and Quillian model of semantic networks?
It cannot explain typicality effects
What did Tanaka and Taylor (1991) find in their study regarding bird experts and non-experts?
Experts responded by specifying the birds’ species
What did Rosch’s experiments reveal about the basic level in categorization?
It reflects everyday experience of college undergraduates
What is the testable prediction based on the hierarchical organization of concepts in semantic networks?
The time it takes to retrieve information about a concept is determined by the distance through the network
What did Coley, Medin & Atran (1997) find in their study comparing undergraduates and horticulturalists?
Undergraduates used more general categories like 'trees'
What is the emphasis of the embodied approach to concepts?
Activation of perceptual and motor areas associated with the concepts
What is the term used to describe the correspondence between words related to specific body parts and the location of brain activation?
Semantic somatotopy
What do mirror neurons fire when we do a task or when we observe another doing the same task?
Sensory and motor areas
According to Hauk et al. (2004), what do the categories in the brain involve?
Specialized areas of the brain and networks connecting them
What is the difficulty in deciding if a particular object belongs to a particular category, such as 'chair,' by looking up its definition?
The role of many different features and properties
How is information about different categories stored in the brain according to the three approaches?
All of the above
Which approach to categorization uses an average representation of category members encountered in the past to determine category membership?
The prototype approach
Which concept allows for variation within a category and proposes that things in a category resemble each other in several ways?
The family resemblance concept
Which approach represents a concept by multiple examples rather than a single averaged prototype, and easily deals with variable categories?
The exemplar approach
What type of approach to categorization is based on whether an object meets the category's definition, but does not work well for natural or human-made objects?
The definitional approach
Which type of organization involves large, more general categories being divided into smaller, more specific categories?
Hierarchical organization
According to the text, which level of categories, such as 'table,' is psychologically important and used when categorizing items?
Basic level of categories
What is the main mechanism through which learning occurs in connectionist networks?
Adjustment of connection weights based on error signals and back-propagation
What characteristic of connectionist networks allows them to exhibit graceful degradation when damaged?
Generalization of learning
Which hypothesis suggests that living things and artifacts are processed by distinct semantic memory systems in the brain?
The sensory-functional hypothesis
What challenges the sensory-functional hypothesis of distinct semantic memory systems for living things and artifacts?
Evidence of a patient with impaired sensory memory and functional ability
What differentiating factor between animals and artifacts is highlighted by the crowding hypothesis?
Animals and artifacts sharing many properties within a category
What may be the role of specific neural circuits in the brain according to the text?
Processing certain categories, distributed over different cortical areas
Study Notes
Connectionist Approach and Semantic Memory Systems
- Connectionist approach or parallel distributed processing is a new approach to representing cognitive processes in computer models.
- It involves units representing concepts and their properties, with connection weights determining signal activation.
- Connectionist networks operate with input units receiving stimuli from the environment and output units receiving input from hidden units.
- Learning in these networks occurs through the adjustment of connection weights based on error signals and back-propagation.
- Connectionist networks can explain generalization of learning and exhibit graceful degradation when damaged.
- Google is involved in connectionism and machine learning, utilizing connectionist principles.
- Different areas of the brain may be specialized to process information about different categories, leading to category-specific memory impairment.
- The sensory-functional hypothesis suggests that living things and artifacts are processed by distinct semantic memory systems in the brain.
- However, evidence challenges this hypothesis, such as a patient with impaired sensory memory and functional ability.
- The multiple factors approach suggests that concepts within categories overlap, and patients may have difficulty distinguishing between items that share similar features.
- Another differentiating factor between animals and artifacts is crowding, where different concepts share many properties within a category.
- There may be specific neural circuits in the brain for certain categories, distributed over different cortical areas, with a limited number of innately determined categories.
Test your knowledge of the connectionist approach and semantic memory systems with this quiz. Explore the principles of connectionist networks, learning processes, and the organization of semantic memory in the brain. Delve into theories and evidence concerning category-specific memory impairment and the processing of living things and artifacts in the brain.
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