Ch. 9: Concepts and Generic Knowledge

Anomia

A disorder, often arising from specific forms of brain damage, in which the person loses the ability to name certain objects

Basic-level categorization

A level of categorization hypothesized as the “natural” and most informative level, neither too specific nor too general. People tend to use basic-level terms in their ordinary conversation and in their reasoning

Connectionist networks

Proposed systems of knowledge representation that rely on distributed representations, and that therefore require parallel distributed processing to operate on the elemtns of a representation

Exemplar-based reasoning

Reasoning that draws on knowledge about specific category members, or exemplars, rather than drawing on more general information about the overall category

Family resemblance

The idea that members of a category resemble one another. In genearl, family resemblance relies on some number of features being shared by any subset of category members, even though these features may not be shared by all members of the category. Therefore, the basis for family resemblance may shift from one subset of the category to another

Graded membership

The idea that some members of a category are “better” members and therefore are more firmly in the category than other members

Hub and spoke model

A proposal for how concepts might be repsented in the brain, with tissue in the anterior temporal lobes serving as the “hub” — a brain location that connects and integrates information from many other brain areas. The “spokes” represent more specific elements of the concept—with visual information relevant to the concept stsored in visual areas; relevant action information stored in motor areas; and so on

Parallel distributed processing (PDP)

A system of handling information in which many steps happen at once and in which various aspects of the problem or task are represented only in a distributed way

Production task

An experimental procedure used in studying concepts, in which the participant is asked to name as many examples as possible

Propositions

The smallest unit of knowledge that can be either true or false. Propositions are often expressed via simple sentences, but this is merely a convenience; other modes of representation are available

Prototype

A single “best example,” or average, identifying the “center” of a category

Rating task

A task in which research participants must evaluate some item or category with reference to some dimension, usually expressing their response in terms of some number.

Sentence verification task

An experimental procedure used for studying memory in which participants are given simple sentences and must respond as quicky as possible whether the sentence is true or false

Typicality

The degree to which a particular case is typical for its kind