Cognitive Psychology Chapter 8

inference

in connection with schemas (chp. 8), an inference refers to the logical interpretations or conclusions that go beyond the original material.

semantic memory

a person's organized knowledge about the world, including knowledge about words and other factual information.

episodic memory

people's memories for events that happened to them personally, in contrast with semantic memory

category

a set of objects that belong together and are considered by the cognitive system to be at least partly equivalent. Categories provide useful information about their members.

concept

the mental representation of a category

situated cognition approach

the proposal that a person makes use of information in the immediate environment or situation; thus, knowledge typically depends on the context surrounding the person.

prototype approach

in semantic memory, the proposal that people decide whether a particular item belongs to a category, based on a comparison between this item and a prototype. If the item is similar to the prototype, then it will be included within this category

prototypicality

according to the prototype theory of semantic memory, the degree to which a member of a category is representative of its category.

graded structure

in the prototype approach to category representation, a description of the variation between the category's most representative or prototypical members, less prototypical members, and nonprototypical members.

typicality effect

in the prototype theory of semantic memory, the observation that people judge typical items (prototypes) faster than items that are not typical (nonprototypes)

semantic priming effect

the observation that people respond faster to an item if it was preceded by an item with similar meaning.

family resemblance

in the prototype approach to semantic memory, the observation that - for some concepts - no single attribute is shared by all examples of the concept. However, each example has at least one attribute in common with some other example of the concept.

superordinate-level categories

in the prototype approach to semantic memory, higher-level or more general categories; "furniture," "animal," and "tool" are all examples of superordinate-level categories.

basic-level categories

in the prototype approach to semantic memory, categories that are moderately specific; "chair," "dog," and "screwdriver" are examples of basic-level categories.

subordinate-level categories

in the prototype approach to semantic memory, lower-level or more specific categories; "desk chair," "collie," and "Phillips screwdriver" are examples of subordinate-level categories.

validity

a test's ability to predict a person's performance in another situation

exemplar approach

in concept representation, the proposal that people first learn information about some specific examples of a concept; then they classify each new stimulus by deciding how closely it resembles all of those specific examples.

exemplar

in concept representation, the examples of a concept stored in memory. A new stimulus is classified by comparing it with these exemplars.

network models

proposals that semantic memory consists of a netlike organization of concepts in memory, with numerous interconnections.

node

in network models, the representation of each concept, or one unit located within the network. When people see or hear the name of a concept, the node representing that concept is activated. The activation expands or spreads from that node to other connected nodes, a process called spreading activation.

spreading activation

in network models of semantic memory, the process by which nodes excite nearby or related nodes.

ACT-R

an acronym for "Adaptive control of Thought-Rational"; this approach uses a series of network models in an attempt to account for a wide variety of tasks including memory, learning, spatial cognition, language, reasoning, problem solving, and decision making.

declaration knowledge

in semantic memory, knowledge about facts and things.

propositional network

according to Anderson's ACT-R model, the pattern of interconnected propositions representing a sentence.

proposition

in deductive reasoning, propositions are the statements that are made up of antecedents.

parallel distributed processing (PDP) approach

a theory describing cognitive processing in terms of networks that link together neuron-like units. These networks perform operations simultaneously and in parallel, rather than one step at a time. Also known as the connectionist approach and the neural-network approach.

connectionism

see PDP approach

neural networks

a theory describing cognitive processing in terms of networks that link together neuron-like units. These networks perform operations simultaneously and in parallel, rather than one step at a time. Also known as the connectionist approach and the neural-network approach.

spontaneous generalization

in the parallel distributed processing approach, when information is missing, people use individual cases to draw inferences about general information.

default assignment

in parallel distributed processing, a method used to fill in missing information about a particular person or object based on information from other similar people or objects.

connection weights

in parallel distributed processing, a characteristic of neural networks that determines how much activation one unit can pass on to another unit.

graceful degradation

in parallel distributed processing, the brain's ability to provide partial memory. Graceful degradation explains why the brain continues to work somewhat accurately, even when an accident, stroke, or dementia has destroyed portions of the cortex.

tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon schema

the subjective experience of knowing which word is being sought, but not being able to retrieve the actual word. A person may know the word's first letter and the general sound of the word - even though the word itself refuses to leap into memory. Also known as the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon.

heuristic

a general rule or problem-solving strategy that usually produces a correct solution; however, it can sometimes lead to cognitive errors.

schema therapy

when a clinician and client work together in order to explore the client's core beliefs, and they also create appropriate new, more helpful strategies.

script

a simple, well-structured sequence of events in a specified order. Scripts are usually associated with a highly familiar activity.

life script

a list of events that a person believes would be most important throughout his or her lifetime.

boundary extension

the tendency to remember having viewed a greater portion of a scene than was actually shown at an earlier time.

abstraction

a memory process that stores the meaning of a message, rather than the exact words.

verbatim memory

word-for-word recall of material presented at an earlier time; the research shows that people usually have poor verbatim memory.

false alarm

in memory research, when people "remember" an item that was not originally presented.

constructive model of memory

in long-term memory, the proposal that people integrate information from individual sentences in order to construct larger ideas.

pragmatic view of memory

the proposal (developed by Murphy and Shapiro) that people pay attention to the aspect of a message that is most relevant to their current goals. For example, knowing when only the gist of a sentence is important and when to pay attention to the specific wording.

memory integration

using background knowledge to incorporate new info into memory in a schema-consistent manner.

gender stereotypes

the beliefs and opinions that people associate with females and males.

explicit memory task

a memory task in which participants are instructed to remember some information. Later, a recall or recognition test requires them to intentionally retrieve that previously learned information.

implicit memory task

an indirect measure of memory. Participants see the material (usually a series of words or pictures). Later, during the test phase, they are instructed to complete a cognitive task that does not directly ask for either recall or recognition. Previous experience with the material facilitates performance on the later task.

even-related potential (ERP) technique

a procedure for recording the very brief, small fluctuations in the brain's electrical activity in response to a stimulus such as an auditory tone.

implicit association test (IAT)

a research tool based on the principle that people can mentally pair two related words together much more easily than they can pair two unrelated words. The IAT is useful in assessing stereotypes, such as stereotypes about gender.