CHAPTER 7: MENTAL IMAGES AND PROPOSITIONS

knowledge representation

the form for what you know in your mind about things, ideas, event, and so on, in the outside world

• declarative knowledge

• proceedural knowledge

two kinds of knowledge structures

declarative knowledge

refer to facts that can be stated, such as the date of your birth, the name of your best friend, or the way a rabbit looks (knowing tha)

procedural knowledge

knowledge of procedures that can be implemented, such as steps involved in tying your shoelaces, adding a column of numbers, or driving a car (knowing how)

• standard laboratory experiments

• neuropsychological studies

two main sources of empirical data on knowledge representation

experimental work

In ____________, researchers indirectly study knowledge representation becaus they cannot look into people’s minds directly. Instead, they observe how people handle various cognitive tasks that require the manipilation of the mentally represnted knowledge.

neuropsychological studies

In _________, researchers typically use onee of two methods” (1) thet observe how the normal brain responds to various congitive tasks involving knowledge representation, or (2) they observe the links between various deficits in knowledge representation and associated pathologies in the brain.

symbolic representation

the relationship between the word an what it represent is simply arbitrary

imagery

the mental representation of things that are not currently seen or sensed by the sense organs

dual-code theory

According to this theory. we use both pictorial and verbal codes for representing information

analog codes

they resemble the objects they are representing

symbolic code

It is a form of knowledge represntation that does not perceptually resemble what is being represented.

propositional theory

• It suggests that we do not store mental representation in the form of images or mere words.

• Our mental representations more closesly resmble the abstract form of a proposition.

epiphenomena

secondary and derivativ phenomena that occur as a result of other more basic cognitive processes

proposition

it is the meaning underlying a particular relationship among concepts.

predicate calculus

Logicians have devised this shorthand means to express the underlying meaning of a relationship.

[Relationship between elements]([Subject element, object element])

functional equivalence hypothesis

According to this hypothesis, although visul imagery is not identical to visual perception, it is functionally equivalent to it.

mental rotation

It involves rotationally transforming an object’s visual mental image.

spatial neglect

In this type of neglect, aa person ignores half of his or her visual field.

representational neglect

In this type of neglect, the person asked to imagine a scene and then describe it ignores half of the imagined scene.

mental models

knowledge structures that individuals construct to understand and explain their experiences

visual imagery

this is the usse of images that represent visual characteristics such as colors and shapes

spatial imagery

refers to images that represent spatial features such as depth dimension, distances, and orientations

spatial cognition

It deals with the acquisition, organization, and usse of knowledge about objects and actions in 2-D and 3-D space.

• landmark knowledge

• route-road knowledge

• survey knowledge

three types of knowledge when forming and using cognitive maps

landmark knowledge

the informtion about particular features at a location and which may be based on both imaginal and propositional representation

route-road knowledge

it involves pathways for moving from one location to another

survey knowldge

it involve estimated distances between landmarks, much as they might appear on survey maps

right-angle bias

People tend to think of intersections as forming 90-degree angles more often than the intersection really do.

symmetry heuristic

People tend to think of shapes as being more symmetrical than they really are.

rotation heuristic

When representing figures and boundaries that are slightly slanted, people tend to distort the images as being either more vertical or more horizontal they really are.

relative-position heuristic

the relative positions of particular landmarks and boundaries is distorted in mental images in ways that more accurately reflect people’s conceptual knowledge about the contexts in which the landmarks and boundaries are located, rather than reflecting the actual spatial configuration