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Concepts and Knowledge

Concepts and Knowledge. Thomas G. Bowers, Ph.D. Penn State Harrisburg 2000. Concepts and Knowledge. We are now moving away from episodic memory to information Described as semantic memories Or, sometimes, context-free or generic memories. Concepts and Knowledge. What is a dog?

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Concepts and Knowledge

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  1. Concepts and Knowledge Thomas G. Bowers, Ph.D. Penn State Harrisburg 2000

  2. Concepts and Knowledge • We are now moving away from episodic memory to information • Described as semantic memories • Or, sometimes, context-free or generic memories

  3. Concepts and Knowledge • What is a dog? • What we know is similar to a dictionary definition • The definition itself is not completely adequate

  4. Concepts and Knowledge • More difficult concepts • What is schizophrenia? • What is truth? • Or virtue? • Wittgenstein (1953) wrote at length on the philosophical nature of these questions

  5. Concepts and Knowledge • Game is a good example of a concept which does not allow ready definition • Question: How do we decide about a concept?

  6. Concepts and Knowledge • Use Family Resemblances • “Fuzzy” logic or fit • There may be no definition • No “necessary” conditions (shared by all) • Or “sufficient” conditions (unique attributes)

  7. Concepts and Knowledge • Prototypes are an alternative to definitions • An “average” or representative member of a class • Marked by fuzzy boundaries • Graded degree of membership • i.e. a degree of dogginess

  8. Concepts and Knowledge • How to test the prototype notion? • Sentence verification task • Assesses processing speed for categorical task • For example, “A chair is furniture” or “A collie is cat”

  9. Concepts and Knowledge • Subjects are faster for true sentences • Subjects are faster for familiar categories • Subjects are slower for atypical examples

  10. Concepts and Knowledge • We can also use a production task • Simply name as many birds as you can, as quickly as you can • Look for convergence with reaction time tasks

  11. Concepts and Knowledge Typicality Ratings of Fruit and Bird

  12. Concepts and Knowledge • Convergent evidence for prototypes • 1. Sentence verification tasks (McCloskey & Glucksberg, 1979) • 2. Production (Barsalou, 1985) • 3. Picture identification (Smith, Balzano & Walker, 1978) • 4. Explicit memory of membership (Rosch, 1975)

  13. Concepts and Knowledge • Convergent evidence for prototypes • 5. Induction - Inferences from typical to the whole, but not from atypical to whole • 6. “Thinking about” categories

  14. Concepts and Knowledge • Prototypes as heuristics • There may be gains in cognitive efficiency and economy • Problems can be solved by step by step algorithm • Tedious, exhaustive, consider and rule out all choices • Heuristics - consider only general plan or strategy • Efficient, may overlook possibilities

  15. Concepts and Knowledge • Schema theory revisited • There is thought to be a network of associations • Related to each other by propositions • There is a network of relationships

  16. Concepts and Knowledge Dog Action Agent Chase Object Cat

  17. Concepts and Knowledge • More complex analysis is possible • Some theories attempt to take into account complex human relationships • Object Relations Theory

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