Memory & Cognition Lectures Test 5

Front 1

Concept

Back 1

An abstract mental representation formed from a collection of stimuli that have properties in common

Front 2

Retrieval in Concept Formation

Back 2

Retrieval system plays a critical role in forming concepts
-important ability underlying concept formation is ability of some current stimulus to automatically arouse matching info in LTS
-new instances are treated similarly to learned instances

Front 3

Attribute View

Back 3

Concepts are stored as rules or sets of defining features
3Steps for concept identification
1)Stimuli with variety of dimensions (variables) with each dimension having variety of possible values
2)Experimenter makes up rule about what properties stimuli must have to be instances of the concept
3)P shown stimuli 1 at a time & guess which ones are instances of the concept
-Concludes that subjects acquired concept when they can correctly identify a series of stimuli

Front 4

Problem with Attribute View

Back 4

Not all concepts can be so clearly defined
Natural vs. Logical Concepts-Rosch
1)In nature, instances of a concept don't consist of an arbitrary collection of feature values
2)Category boundaries are not clearly delineated-boundaries are fuzzy
3)All instances of a concept aren't equally good-->Leads to prototype view

Front 5

Prototype View

Back 5

When we experience a series of instances, we abstract and store in memory an average representation of the stimuli (a prototype)

Front 6

Exemplar View

Back 6

Person encodes each individual instance of a category in memory
-When new instance is encountered, it contacts all matching info in memory
-Prototype is identified (or feels familiar) because it matches many individual instances encoded in memory
Advantage: Accounts for a # of findings about concepts

Front 7

Basic-level Concepts--Rosch

Back 7

-Highest level of abstraction at which instances of a category 1st become highly similar
-Instances of concepts have much in common, look much alike

Front 8

Retrieval & Concept Formation

Back 8

If retrieval is important to concept formation than concepts should be more easily formed at the basic level than at the superordinate
-Concepts are 1st acquired at basic level

Front 9

Role of Concepts

Back 9

Concepts allow us to know a great deal about things we've never encountered before
-Reason we can know a lot about new instances of a concept is because they're similar to other, experienced instances--They retrieve info associated with the familiar concept
-Whatever we know about the familiar concept we can apply to the new instances

Front 10

Concepts and Perception

Back 10

Concepts allow us to perceive our environment based on sketchy or partial info from the environment
-Allow us to fill in missing info
-Top-Down processing-process of using conceptual info to supplement environmental info

Front 11

Why problems are hard to solve

Back 11

The problem situation does not provide optimal cues for the concept needed to fill in the gap between the given situation and the goal

Front 12

Thinking

Back 12

Attending to what isn't there
-Paying attention to aspects of the environment not being detected by ones senses (something not seen or heard)

Front 13

Problem

Back 13

Exists when we can't immediately reach a goal