Cognitive Psychology Exam 3

Knowledge

What you know; facts, information, explicit how-tos

Conceptual knowledge

Knowledge that enables us to recognize objects and events and make inferences about their properties

Concept

The mental representation of a class of or individual object, event, idea, etc. (ex: costume, person, convention, street, running, etc)

Category

Group of objects/events/ideas that belong together because they are part of the same class (ex: houses, furniture, relationships)

Category, concept

A _____ contains all possible examples of a particular _______

Categorization

Process of placing objects/events/ideas into a category

Definitional approach to categorization

Idea that we can decide whether something is a member of a category by determining whether the object meets the definition of the category

Family resemblance approach

Idea that things in a particular category resemble each other in a number of ways and categorization occurs based on these resemblances

Prototype

A “typical” member of a category; a standard formed by averaging the category members a person has experienced in the past. Not necessarily a member of the category itself; a generalized representation

Typicality effect

Objects with higher typicality are easier and faster to identify

Exemplar approach

Members of a category are categorized by judging them against examples the person has encountered in the past

Exemplars

Examples of members of a category that the person has encountered in the past

Exemplar approach

What approach is good for complex concepts

Hierarchical organization of knowledge

More general categories are divided into smaller and smaller subcategories

Global (superordinate)

What level of the hierarchical organization of knowledge are categories like furniture and vehicle

Basic

What level of the hierarchical organization of knowledge are categories like chair, bed, car, bicycle

Specific (subordinate

What level of the hierarchical organization of knowledge are categories like kitchen chair, Chevy, trail bike, van