Cog Test 3

Umass Amherst, Psych 315 Cognitive Psyhology -- Test 3 on Knowledge (Concepts & Generic Knowledge, and Language). Textbook chapters 9&10.

Which of the following is NOT true about Rosch’s prototype theory of category membership?

A. Judgments about an item are made with reference to the ideal/average of that category

B. In this theory, the boundaries of the category are specified, rather than the center of the category

C. Items that more closely resemble the prototype are perceived to be “better” members of the category than other items

D. It can explain typicality effects

B — In this theory, the boundaries of the category are specified, rather than the center of the category

• This is false. The prototype theory specifies the central “average” of the category and has blurred boundaries

Which of the following is NOT an attribute of the prototype
theory?

A. Fuzzy boundaries
B. Sets of weighted features
C. Defining features
D. Gradedness of category membership

C—Defining features

• Defining features are involved in the classic view of category membership. In the prototype theory, nothing is NEEDED 100% of the time for an object to be categorized a certain way

What is the exemplar theory of categorization?

To categorize a new instance, you compare it with the stored exemplars of that category in your mind, using our previous knowledge of the world to decide which features are important in this comparison

What is the prototype theory of categorization?

To categorize a new instance, we compare it to our created prototype member in our brains, assessing to what degree they are similar

What is the classic theory of categorization?

To categorize a new instance as part of a group, it must have ALL of the defining features in that object’s definition to be a member in that category.

Research shows that children are willing to make suggestions
about how to turn a toaster into a coffee pot but deny the
possibility of turning a skunk into a raccoon. This is evidence that…

A. Category membership and typicality ratings can diverge.
B. Category membership is influenced by knowledge about
underlying properties (i.e., the essence of the category).
C. Our use of categories is dictated by typicality.
D. Children and adults have radically different understandings of
categorization.

B — Category membership is influenced by knowledge about
underlying properties (i.e., the essence of the category).

• This exhibits psychological essentialism, which relies on our knowledge and beliefs about the general world and categorization

Is membership in a category black/white or graded in the classic view? What about in the prototype view?

In the classic view, membership is black/white based on if the object meets all of the defining features.

In the prototype view, membership is graded, and the lines between categories are blurry and not well defined

Describe the Keil study. What was done, and what was found?

Preschool children were asked “Can you turn a toaster into a coffee pot?” and responded yes, but when asked “Can you turn a raccoon into a skunk?” they responded no.

• This shows psychological essentialism: the belief that members of a category have an unseen property that causes them to be in the category, and this usually only applies to natural/organic categories

• This also shows that psychological essentialism is an innate belief, since it exists in these young kids without having been taught

In a sentence verification task, which of the following sentences
would produce the SLOWEST response time?

A. A robin can fly.
B. A robin is a bird.
C. A robin is an animal
D. A bat is a bird.

D — A bat is a bird

• The longest search is one that is a failed search. To reach the conclusion that a bat is not a bird, you must search your entire brain for a connection between bat-bird first, before coming up empty-handed

Human children and apes trained on language capaity…

A. aquire language with the same ease

B. are equally creative and playful with language

C. differ in their usage of language. For example, apes mainly use it to get things

D. master complex syntax equally well

C — Apes and children differ in their usage of language. For example, apes mainly use it to get things

Patient A: "I . . . w-w-w- . . . went . . . um . . . th."
Patient B: "Then, the zoo did very wildly to him, and before all he
then did again to her. It did too him and her and them and all from
here."
Patient A probably suffers from damage to _______ resulting in a
_______ aphasia. Patient B probably suffers from damage to
_______ resulting in a _______ aphasia.
a. Broca's area, receptive; Wernicke's area, expressive
b. Wernicke's area, receptive; Broca's area, expressive
c. Broca's area, expressive; Wernicke's area, receptive
d. Wernicke's area, expressive; Broca's area, receptive

C

Broca’s aphasia is also known as ____ or ______ aphasia

Broca’s aphasia is also known as nonfluent or expressive aphasia.

Wernicke’s aphasia is also known as ____ or _____ aphasia

Wernicke’s aphasia is also known as fluent or receptive aphasia

A person with Broca’s aphasia (aka ___/___ aphasia), will have ____ grammar skills and _____ comprehension

A person with Broca’s aphasia (aka nonfluent/expressive aphasia), will have poor grammar skills and good comprehension

A person with Wernicke’s aphasia (aka ___/___ aphasia), will have ____ grammar skills and _____ comprehension

A person with Wernicke’s aphasia (aka fluent/receptive aphasia) will have good grammar skills and poor comprehension.

True or False: membership is graded in both the prototype and exemplar models of categorization

True. In both the prototype and exemplar theories, membership is graded and there are no hard lines or cutoffs.

What determines typicality?

Feature frequency: holding more of the frequent features of the category than other members

True or False: Prototype theory predicts that typicality and category membership will always go hand-in-hand

True. If something is typical of a category, this theory assumes that this object is a member of the category (this is a fault of the theory — this isn’t always the case)

Which of the following is true about the hierarchical semantic network?..

A. It stores all information about a member with the member

B. It predicts a typicality effect for response times in the sentence verification task

C. It has problems explaining association effects on response speed in the sentence verification task

D. Information can be retrieved in parallel from all levels of the network

C. The hierarchical semantic network has problems explaining association effects on response speed in the sentence verification task

What is the association effect?

When we associate a certain member with a category or attribute more heavily or strongly, and this makes us quicker to verify that the object is a member of that category

—Ex: We would be quicker to verify that a peacock has feathers than a robin, even though they are both birds and an equal # of semantic connections away from “feather”

Which of the following is not true…

A. “m” is a phoneme and never a morpheme

B. “s” is a phoneme and never a morpheme

C. the word “wish” contains 3 phonemes

D. the word “walked” contains 2 morphemes

B. Yes “s” is a phoneme, but it can also be a morpheme when added to the end of a word to make it plural

Nativists assume that….

We are born with a special language-learning device. Therefore, language and cognition are independent.

Anti-nativists assume that…

We are born with a general-purpose learning device. Therefore, cognition and language are connected

Nativists assume that…

A. we are born with a genera;-purpose learning device than enables us to learn language

B. we are born with a learning device speific to language, that stores information about the details of each and every language in the world

C. language and cognition are intrinsically interlinked, i.e., they are not independent capabilities

D. language and cognition are independent

D: Nativists assume that language and cognition are independent

A patient with fluent but meaningless speech and problems with comprehension most likely has damage in the left ____ and should be diagnosed with _____’s aphasia

A patient with fluent but meaningless speech and problems with comprehension most likely has damage in the left posterior temporal lobe and should be diagnosed with Wernicke’s aphasia

Which of the following is fals

Broca’s area is in the left ____ ______ ____, and Wernicke’s area is in the left ____ ____ ____

Broca’s area is in the left inferior frontal cortex, and Wernicke’s area is in the left posterior temporal lobe

Bilinguals…

A. only show lexical competition from both languages in situations where the speaker mixes these languages within a sentence

B. have worse cognitive control skills than monolinguals, since they always need to allow words from both languages to compete

C. seem to have better cognitive control outside of the language domain

D. only have better cognitive control when it comes to language

C: Bilinguals seem to have better cognitive control outside of the language domain

What is the strongest version of language determinism?

Language determines thought.

What is the weaker version of language determinism?

Language affects only perception

What is the weakest version of language determinism?

Language only affects processing on tasks where linguistic encoding is important

What is vocabulary differentiation?

The idea that languages differ in their vocabulary capacities.

— Some cultures have single words available for concepts that other languages take many words to describe