Chapter 9: Knowledge

Reference: "Cognitive Psychology Connecting mind, Research and Everyday experience" Goldstein, E.B. (2019)

classification

allows us to treat different things as the same

communication

we communicate with each other by using words that refer to concepts

prediction

predict invisible properties

T or F: Misclassifying an object can have minor consequences

F

categorization

a cognitive process used to organize information by placing it into larger groupings of information

concept

a mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people

conceptual knowledge

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

exemplar

an example or model, especially an ideal one

exemplar approach to categorization

the approach to categorization in which members of a category are judged against exemplars, examples of members of the category that the person has encountered in the past

exemplar theory

the mental representation of a category consists of all the category exemplars ever observed

3 advantages of exemplar theory:

no defining features, typicality effects, borderline cases

no defining features

all feature dimensions contribute to the computation of similarity

typicality effects

atypical items are more distant from other category members

borderline cases

unclear cases are equidistant from the members of two (or more) alternative categories

T or F: Categories differ in how variable they are

T

T or F: Prototypes gain information about category variability, exemplars don’t

F

T or F: Categories often exhibit correlations between their features

T

T or F: Prototypes lose information about correlations, exemplars don’t

T

T or F: Some categories do not have exceptions, members that are more similar to another category’s prototype

F

T or F: Exemplar models tolerate exceptions, prototype models do too.

F

Which of the following are explanations for the Picture Super