Cognitive Processes PSY 334

1. Cognitive ProcessesPSY 334 Chapter 5 – Abstraction of Information into Memory

2. Features of a Penny 1. Does the Lincoln on the penny face right or left? 2. Is anything above his head? What? 3. Is anything below his head? What? 4. Is anything to his left? What? 5. Is anything to his right? What?

3. Demos • Features of a penny • http://newpenny.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Lincoln_Penny_Obverse.jpg • Eidetic imagery • http://www.gis.net/~tbirch/x2.htm

4. Wanner’s Experiment 1. When you score your results, do nothing to correct your answers but mark carefully those answers which are wrong. 2. When you score your results, do nothing to correct your answers but carefully mark those answers which are wrong. 3. When you score your results, do nothing to your correct answers but mark carefully those answers which are wrong. 4. When you score your results, do nothing to your correct answers but carefully mark those answers which are wrong.

5. Wanner’s Experiment • People do not remember exact wording. • Wanner’s experiment: • Two sentences differ in style • Two sentences differ in meaning • Subjects warned or not warned to pay attention to style • Memory is better for changes in wording that affect meaning. • Warning only helps memory for style.

6. Wanner’s Results

7. Memory for Visual Information • Memory for pictures is very strong and better than for words. • Mandler’s study – token vs type changes. • Type = meaning • Token = detail • Type changes were easier to identify than token. • Picture memory depends on meaning.

8. Mandler & Ritchey’s Stimuli

9. Droodles Ship arriving too late to save a drowning witch Man playing trombone in phone booth

10. Droodles • Bower, Karlin & Dueck presented droodles with or without their captions. • Subjects given labels were able to redraw them with 70% accuracy. • Subjects without labels were 51% accurate. • Memory depended on meaningful interpretation.

11. Retention of Detail • Perceptual detail is encoded but quickly forgotten. • Gernsbacher’s picture reversals: • 10 sec delay = 79% accuracy • 10 min delay = 57% accuracy. • Anderson’s story sentences: • Immediate test = 99% correct • 2 min delay = 56% correct • Delay does not affect meaning accuracy.

12. Gernsbacher’s Stimuli

13. Anderson’s Story Sentences The missionary shot the painter. • The missionary shot the painter. • The painter was shot by the missionary. • The painter shot the missionary. • The missionary was shot by the painter. • The first two sentences are True, the second two are False. • Subjects recalled who was shot but not which sentence they heard originally.

14. Implications for Memory • Memory is enhanced if people can attach meaning to material. • Loud and fast rehearsal doesn’t work. • Meaningless words can be better remembered by adding meaning: • DAX is like “DAD” • GIB is first part of “gibberish” • KA6PCG – my “ham” radio call letters.

15. Propositional Representations • Notation – a method for describing the meaning that remains once details have been abstracted away. • Propositional representation – uses concepts from logic and linguistics to describe meaning. • Proposition – the smallest unit of knowledge that can be judged as true or false.

16. Propositional Analysis • A complex sentence consists of smaller units of meaning (propositions). • If any of the propositions are untrue, the entire sentence cannot be true. • The meaning of primitive assertions is preserved, but not the exact wording.

17. Kintsch’s Notation Each proposition is a list containing a relation plus arguments: (relation, arguments) • Relation – organizes the arguments. • Verbs, adjectives, other relational terms. • Arguments – particular times, places, people, objects. • Nouns • Relations connect arguments.

18. Example • Lincoln, who was president of the United States during a bitter war, freed the slaves. • A. Lincoln was president of the United States during a war. • B. The war was bitter. • C. Lincoln freed the slaves.

19. Kintsch’s Notation • a. (president-of: Lincoln, United States, war) • b. (bitter: war) • c. (free: Lincoln, slaves) The slaves were freed by Lincoln. Lincoln freed the slaves.

20. Psychological Reality • Psychological reality -- do propositions really exist mentally? • Bransford & Franks: • Presented 12 sentences with the same 2 sets of 4 propositions. • Tested on 3 kinds of sentences. Old (previously viewed), new (containing same propositions), noncase (new and containing different propositions). • Able to identify noncase, but not old/new

21. Bransford & Franks Stimuli 1. (eat: ants, jelly, past) 2. (sweet: jelly) 3. (on: jelly, table, past) 4. (in: ants, kitchen, past) 1. (roll down: rock, mountain, past) 2. (crush: rock, hut, past) 3. (beside: hut, woods, past) 4. (tiny: hut)

22. Propositional Networks • Propositional network – another way of representing propositions (the structure of meaning). • Nodes – the propositions, including relations and arguments. • Links – labeled arrows connecting the nodes. • Spatial location of nodes is arbitrary. • Can show hierarchies of meaning.

23. Sample Propositional Network

24. How to Draw a Network • Use Kintsch’s notation to write the propositions contained in your sentence. • Draw a node for each proposition. • It doesn’t matter where you draw them. • Nothing goes inside the nodes. • Arguments & relations are the link labels. • Shared arguments connect nodes to each other.

25. Associations Between Ideas • Weisberg – demonstrated that ideas are associated in the ways shown in a propositional network. • Subjects memorized sentences. • Given a word from the sentence, subjects were asked to say the first word that came to mind. • Subjects cued with “slow” said “children” and almost never “bread”.

26. Weisberg’s Stimuli Subjects cued with “slow” said “children” and never “bread”.

27. Amodal vs Perceptual Symbol Systems • Amodal symbol systems – the meaning is abstracted away from the visual or verbal modality. • Example – propositional networks • Perceptual symbol systems – Barsalou proposes that all information is represented perceptually and is modality-specific. • Context is included as part of the memory.

28. Evidence (Barsalou) • Stanfield & Zwaan – read a sentence about a nail pounded into either the wall or the floor. • Viewed a picture of a horizontal or vertical nail. • Asked “was this object mentioned in the sentence you just read?” • Faster at saying horizontal nail with wall and vertical nail with floor.

29. Paivio’s Dual-Code Compromise • Paivio suggests that when we hear a sentence it evokes visual images that are stored in place of the words. • Findings that people can and do pay attending to wording when warned to do so, support dual-code theory. • Anderson considers Barsalou’s theory too all-encompassing to be testable.

30. Evidence (Anderson) • 1. The lieutenant wrote his signature on the check. • 2. The lieutenant forged a signature on the check. • 1. The lieutenant enraged his superior in the barracks. • 2. The lieutenant infuriated a superior in the barracks. Faster to confirm writing & forging are the same act with different intentions Slower to confirm

31. Conceptual Knowledge • Concept -- an abstraction formed from multiple experiences. • Propositions – eliminate perceptual details but keep relationships among elements. • Categories – eliminate perceptual details but keep general properties of a class of experiences. • Used to make predictions. • Two kinds: semantic networks, schemas

32. Embodied Cognition • Our understanding of language depends on covertly acting out physically what is described. • Different modalities may connect via mirror neurons. • Multimodal Hypothesis – we can convert from one modality to another. • Amodal Hypothesis – there is an intermediate meaning representation.

33. Freelisting Task (Demo) • On a sheet of scratch paper, please write as many names of animals as you can think of.

34. Semantic Networks • Quillian – information about categories stored in a network hierarchy. • Nodes are categories. • Isa links related categories to each other. • Nodes have properties associated with them. • Properties of higher level nodes are also true of lower level nodes linked to them. • Categories are used to make inferences.

35. Sample Category Hierarchy

36. Psychological Reality of Networks • Collins & Quillian – asked subjects to judge the truth value of sentences: • Canaries can sing – 1310 ms • Canaries have feathers – 1380 ms • Canaries have skin – 1470 ms • Frequently used facts also verified faster, so stored with node: • Apples are eaten • Apples have dark seeds

37. Schemas • Schema – stores specific knowledge about a category, not just properties: • Uses a slot structure mixing propositional and perceptual information. • Slots specify default values for what is generally or typically true. • Isa statement makes a schema part of a generalization hierarchy. • Part hierarchy.

38. Sample Schema for “House” • Houses are a type of building. • Houses have rooms. • Houses can be built of wood, brick or stone. • Houses serve as human dwellings. • Houses tend to have rectilinear and triangular shapes. • Houses are usually larger than 100 sq ft and smaller than 10,000 sq ft.

39. Isa Statements for House • Isa: building • Parts: rooms • Materials: woord, brick, stone • Function: human dwelling • Shape: rectilinear, triangular • Size: 100-10,000 square feet

40. Psychological Reality of Schemas • Brewer & Treyens – subjects left in a room for 35 sec, then asked to list what they saw there: • Good recall for items in schema • False recall for items typically in schema but missing from this room. • 29/30 recalled chair, desk; 8 recalled skull • 9 recalled books when there were none

41. Brewer & Treyans Room

42. Degrees of Category Membership • Members of categories can vary depending on whether their features satisfy schema constraints: • Gradation from least typical to most typical. • Rosch – rated typicality of birds from 1-7: • Robin = 1.1 • Chicken = 3.8. • Faster judgments of pictures of typical items, higher sentence-frame ratings.

43. Disagreements at Category Boundaries • McCloskey & Glucksberg – subjects disagree about whether atypical items belong in a category: • 30/30 apple is a fruit, chicken is not a fruit • 16/30 pumpkin is a fruit • Subjects change their minds when tested later. • Labov – boundaries for cups and bowls change with context.

44. Context Changes Boundaries

45. Event Concepts (Scripts) • Schank & Abelson – stereotypic sequences of actions called scripts. • Bower, Black & Turner – script for going to a restaurant. • Scripts affect memory for stories: • Story elements included in script well remembered, atypical elements not recalled, false recognition of script items. • Items out of order put back in typical order.

46. Schema for Restaurant Visit • Scene 1: Entering • Look for table, decide where to sit, go to table, sit down. • Scene 2: Ordering • Look at menu, decide on food, order food, cook prepares food, etc. • Scene 3: Eating • Scene 4: Exiting • Server gives bill to cust., pay bill, leave

47. Two Theories • What happens mentally when we categorize? • Two theories are being debated – we likely use multiple ways. • Abstraction theory -- we abstract and store the general properties of instances. • Prototype theory. • Exemplar theory -- we store the multiple instances themselves and then compare average distances among them.

48. Drawings of Artificial Animals

49. Evidence From Neuroscience • People with temporal lobe deficits selectively impaired in recognizing natural categories but not artifacts (tools) • People with frontoparietal lesions unaffected for biological categories but cannot recognize artifacts (tools). • Artifacts may be organized by what we do with them whereas biological categories are identified by shape.

50. Two Patients with Impaired Knowledge of Living Things