Psychology Exam 3

Cognition

Basically thinking: it encompasses the process associated with perception, knowledge, problem solving, judgement, language, and memory

Perception

The process through which individuals interpret and organize/experience sensory information to understand their environment.

What are concepts?

Mental categories or groupings your brain creates to organize information; such as, linguistic information, images, ideas, or memories

• Example: A concept is a mental label your brain uses to group similar things together.

  Examples:

  • “Tree”

  • “Dog”

  • “Love”

  • “Justice”

  Even though individual examples look different, your brain groups them under one idea.

Define each type of concepts

• Simple concept: Information your brain categorizes that is concrete, obvious, and easy to understand, usually based on direct experience. For example, snow is white and wet.

• Complex: A complex concept is a mental category made up of multiple features or simple concepts combined, making it more complicated to understand. You can see this when learning chemistry or math.

• Abstract: An abstract concept is a mental category that does not have a physical form and can be understood differently by different people, such as love or justice.

Prototype

A prototype is the mental “best example” or “average example” your brain uses to decide whether something belongs in a category.

Prototype-based categorization happens when the brain classifies concepts by comparing their features to a general, typical example formed from past experiences.

When you see something new, your brain asks:

“How similar is this to my mental idea of a typical one?”

If it’s close enough → you say it belongs.

Example:

• You see an animal

• You compare it to your mental image of a bird

• If it matches closely enough, you say “that’s a bird.” Because your brain compares things to a mental reference

Examplar

An exemplar is a specific, real example of something that you store in memory and use to judge or categorize new things.

Example:

You see a chicken and go through your brain to remember all the types of birds you encountered in your life (sparrow, pigeon, lovebird, dove, eagle, etc) and compare it to them to see if that chicken is a bird.

Natural concept

Mental category that occurs naturally or organically through experiences direct or indirect (e.g. snow).

Artificial concept

a mental category that is defined by strict rules, formulas, or specific characteristics, not by experience.

ex:

• A triangle → must have 3 sides

• A square → 4 equal sides + 90° angles

• Even numbers → divisible by 2

• Chemical elements → defined by atomic number

These categories don’t form “naturally” in your brain — you learn them because someone teaches you the rules.

Schema

A mental construct consisting of a cluster or collection of related concepts that helps in organizing and interpreting information based on prior knowledge.

Role Schema

Assumptions about how individuals in certain roles will behave

Event Schema

Set of behaviors for a given event

Example:

Think about what you do when you walk into an elevator you push the button, wait facing the door, and walk out.

Language

Communication system uses words and rules to organize ideas and transmit information

Lexicon

Words of a given language; language’s vocab

Grammar

Set of rules used to convey meaning through use of lexicon