Chapter 7 mem&cog

semantic memory

general knowledge about the world

collins & quillian model

memory is a network of connected concepts (nodes + links)

spreading activation

activating one concept spreads to related concepts

sentence verification task

deciding if a sentence is true/false to test memory

why are some sentences slow to verify?

they require more distance in the network (more activation)

search intersection

where two activated concepts meet in the network

smith’s feature comparison model

concepts are compared based on features

defining feature

must-have feature (essential)

characteristic feature

common but not required

category typicality effect

some examples are recognized faster (more typical)

semantic relatedness effect

related concepts are processed faster

connectionism

brain-like network with parallel processing

advantage of connectionism

works like the brain + processes many things at once

category-specific deficit

loss of one category

lexicon

mental dictionary

anomia

trouble finding words

semantic priming

faster response to related words

prime

first word

target

second word

facilitation

faster processing

cost

slower processing

SOA

time between prime and target

short SOA effect

automatic priming

long SOA effect

more thinking/ expectations

priming is implicit

happens without awareness

schema

mental framework

script

step-by-step schema

bartlett’s finding

memory is reconstructive (not exact)

reconstruction

rebuilding memory using knowledge

loftus & palmer

wording changes memory

classic view of categories

based on strict rules

prototype theory

compare to “average” example

exemplar theory

compare to stored examples