General Knowledge

Inference

Logical conclusions not in original material.

Semantic Memory

Organized knowledge about the world.

Episodic Memory

Information about personal life events.

Category

Set of objects that belong together.

Concept

Mental representation of a category.

Situated Cognition Approach

Uses immediate environment for understanding.

Prototype

Best example of a category.

Prototype Approach

Classifying items by comparing to prototypes.

Prototypicality

Degree of representativeness of a category.

Graded Structure

Starts with prototypical members, then nonprototypes.

Typicality Effect

Faster judgment of typical items.

Semantic Priming Effect

Faster response to similar meaning items.

Family Resemblance

Shared attributes among concept examples.

Superordinate-Level Categories

Higher-level, more general categories.

Basic-Level Categories

Moderately specific categories.

Subordinate-Level Categories

Lower-level, more specific categories.

Exemplar Approach

Learning from specific examples of concepts.

Exemplar

Specific examples stored in memory.

Network Models of Semantic Memory

Netlike organization of concepts in memory.

Collins and Loftus Model

Semantic memory organized in interconnected structures.

Node

Location in a semantic network.

Spreading Activation

Activation spreads from one node to others.

ACT-R

Adaptive Control of Thought-Rational model.

Declarative Knowledge

Knowledge about facts and things.

Propositional Network

Interconnected propositions representing knowledge.

Proposition

Smallest unit of knowledge, true or false.

Parallel Distributed Processing (PDP)

Cognitive processes modeled by neuron-like units.

Connectionism

Alternative name for PDP approach.

Spontaneous Generalization

Drawing inferences from individual cases.

Default Assignment

Filling in missing information based on similarities.

Connection Weights

Determine activation transfer between units.

Graceful Degradation

Partial memory retrieval capability of the brain.

Tip-of-the-Tongue Phenomenon

Knowing a target but unable to retrieve it.

Schema

Generalized knowledge about situations or events.

Heuristic

General rule typically accurate for decision-making.

Script

Structured sequence of familiar events.

Life Script

List of important lifetime events.

Boundary Extension

Remembering more of a scene than shown.

Abstraction

Storing meaning rather than exact wording.

Verbatim Memory

Poor recall of exact words after presentation.

False Alarm

Remembering items not originally presented.

Constructive Model of Memory

Integrating information to form larger ideas.

Pragmatic View of Memory

Attention to relevant message aspects.

Memory Integration

Incorporating new information in a schema-consistent way.