PSY 200 Exam 3

What we know

Categories of objects, events, and abstract ideas

The process by which things are placed into groups called categories

All possible examples of a particular concept

Enables us to recognize objects and events and to make inferences about their properties

• Behavioral approach

• Determine category membership based on whether object meets the definition of the category

• Does not work well

• Not all members of everyday categories have the same defining features

• Membership is determined by comparing the object to a prototype that represents the category

• Items in a category that have a large amount of overlap have high family resemblance

An average representation of the “typical” member of a category

Question: Are all members of a category created equal?

Method: Participants rated the extent to which each member represented the category title on a scale of 1 (good) to 7 (poor)

Results: There are various degrees of “typicality”, where high typicality means that a category member closely resembles the category prototype, while a low typicality member does not

Common characteristics between items in a category

Prototypical objects are affected more by priming

Question: Testing the priming effect

Method: Asked participants to list as many objects in a category as possible

Results: Prototypical objects are named first

Members of a category with high family resemblance that are affected more by priming and are named first when people list members of the category

• Behavioral approach

• Concept is represented by multiple examples rather than a single prototype

• Examples are actual category members instead of abstract averages

• Global (Superordinate) → Basic → Specific (Subordinate)

• Going above the basic level = large loss of information

• Going below the basic level = little gain of information

Question: How does knowledge affect categorization?

Method: Participants used categories to name pictures of birds

Results: Experts used more specific categories, while nonexperts used more basic categories

• Network approach

• Concepts are linked and arranged in networks that represent the way concepts are organized in the mind (node = category/concept)

• Not meant to mirror physiology

Shared properties are only stored at higher-level nodes, while exceptions are stored at lower nodes

• When a node is activated, activity spreads out along all connected links

• Concepts that receive activation are primed and more easily accessed from memory

• Network approach

• Creating computer models for representing cognitive processes (parallel distributed processing)

• Knowledge represented in the distributed activity of many units

• Weights determine at each connection how strongly an incoming signal will activate next unit

• Performance disruption occurs gradually as parts of the system are damaged

• Network operation is not totally disrupted by damage

• Physiological approach

• Different brain areas may be specialized to process information about different categories

• Double dissociation for categories “living things” and “nonliving things” (artifacts)

• Living things → sensory properties, artifacts → functions

Physiological approach

There are more factors than just sensory and functional that determine how concepts are divided within a category

Question: What factors determine how concepts are divided within a category?

Method: Ask participants about 160 different objects and how much they associate an object with color, motion, visual form, sound, etc.

Results: People associated animals (living things) with color and motion but not with performed action, and associated artifacts (nonliving things) with mostly performed action rather than motion and color

• Physiological approach

• There are specific neural circuits in the brain for some specific categories, with some being more innately determined because they are important for survival (such as the fusiform face area (FFA))

• Physiological approach

• Knowledge of concepts is based on reactivation of sensory and motor processes that occur when we interact with the object

• Thinking about a concept activates perceptual and motor areas associated with that concept

Neurons that fire when we do a task or we observe another person doing that same task

Correspondence between words related to specific body parts and location of brain activation

System of communication using sounds or symbols that enables us to express feelings, thoughts, ideas, and experiences

• Hierarchical: small components can be combined to form larger units (words → phrases → sentences)

• Governed by rules: components can be arranged in specific ways

Language is learned through reinforcement

• Human language is coded in the genes, as children produce sentences they have never heard and that have never been reinforced

• Underlying basis of all language is similar

• Discover psychological process by which humans acquire and process language

• Focused on 4 key areas: comprehension, representation, speech production, and acquisition

All words that a person understands (mental dictionary)

The meaning of language

The meaning of words

Question: How do we determine the meaning of words?

Method: Lexical decision task - decide as quickly as possible whether strings of letters are words or nonwords

Results: We respond faster to high-frequency words

Question: How do we determine the meaning of words?

Method: Measured fixation and gaze times of participants reading different sentences with high/low frequency words (The slow music vs. the slow waltz)

Results: Low-frequency words got longer fixation and gaze times than high-frequency words

Perceiving individual words in normal conversation even though there are no silences between spoken words

Words have multiple meanings, where context usually clears up ambiguity

Question: How do we understand ambiguous words?

Method: Participants read the probe word out loud as quickly as possible with a context word or without a context word, measured response times

Results: Without a context word, we briefly access multiple meanings of ambiguous words before the context takes over, leading to reaction time being slightly slower

Some words are used more frequently than others

When words have two or more meanings with different dominance (tin means metal and container)

When words have two or more meanings with about the same dominance (cast means play and plaster)

Question: How does meaning dominance work?

Method: Measured gaze time of participants for words with multiple meanings vs words with one meaning in various sentences

Results: For balanced dominance, people look at the word with more meanings longer than a word with one meaning. However, for biased dominance, people looked at the word with more meanings the same amount of time as the word with one meaning when the more frequent meaning of the word was used. When the less frequent meaning of the word was used, they looked at the word with more meanings longer.

Mentally grouping words into phrases to help the listener create meaning

Rules for combining words into sentences

Sentences that begin by appearing to mean one thing, but then end up meaning something else

When the initial words are ambiguous, but the meaning is made clear by the end of the sentence

• Listeners use heuristics to group words into phrases

• Fast, but could be incorrect

• Utilizes late closure

Parser assumes new word is part of the current phrase (closes the phrase as late as possible)

Parsing is influenced by many factors other than syntax, such as word meaning, memory load, story context, scene context, and prior experience with language

Question: Studying constraint-based approach to parsing

Method: Participants looked at a display and were told to carry out an ambiguous set of instructions (place the apple on the towel in the box) and unambiguous instructions (move the apple that is on the towel to the box) and their eye movements were measured

Results: When there was one apple, participants’ eyes moved toward the incorrect destination ~50% of the time with ambiguous instructions, and almost never with the unambiguous instructions. When there were two apples, participants’ eyes moved toward the incorrect destination ~20% of the time with ambiguous instructions, and ~10% of the time with unambiguous instructions.

How scene context influences how a sentence is processed/parsed

Eye movements change when information suggests revision of interpretation of sentence is necessary

Linguistic and nonlinguistic information is used simultaneously to process a sentence

Representation of the text in one’s mind creates clear relations between parts of the text and between parts of the text and the story’s main topic

Creating information during reading not explicitly stated in the text by connecting objects/people

Creating information during reading not explicitly stated in the text by connecting tools or methods

Creating information during reading not explicitly stated in the text by connecting how events in the previous sentence caused the events in the next clause

Mental representation of what the text is about that represents events as if experiencing the situation with the point of view of the protagonist

Question: How do people understand stories?

Method: Participants would read a sentence that describes a situation (hammering a nail into a wall vs. hammering a nail into the floor) and then indicate whether a picture shows the object that was mentioned in the sentence

Results: Participants would say yes to a nail regardless of orientation, but the reaction time for a nail which “matches” the orientation it would be hammered in (sideways for wall vs. downwards for floor) would be faster than for a nail which doesn’t match

Speaker constructs sentences so that they include given information and new information

Shared mental knowledge and beliefs

Synchronization between conversation partners (similar gestures, speaking rating, pronunciation, etc.)

Being able to understand what others feel, think, or believe

Being able to interpret or react to the person’s gestures, facial expressions, tones of voice, and other cues to meaning

typicality

the same

Pros: It is a useful model for representing the connections between concepts and properties and how other concepts and properties are linked to one another

Cons: Cannot explain typicality effects (people react more rapidly to high prototypical objects)

Concepts are represented by activity that is distributed across a network (parallel distributed processing)

Large loss of information when going from basic to global/superordinate level

Little gain of information when going from basic to specific/subordinate level

Semantic category approach

Anaphoric, instrument, and causal

(1) Hierarchical and (2) governed by rules

Dominance

It shows that words that are semantically related are more easily processed compared to unrelated words and that the activation of one word can spread to related words, suggesting that the semantic network model (Collins and Quillian) is accurate

Parsing; temporary ambiguity

Garden path model of parsing and constraint-based approach to parsing

Syntax; the garden path model of parsing argues that listeners use syntax to perform parsing whereas the constraint-based approach to parsing argues that parsing is also influenced by many other factors rather than just syntax

Exemplar approach

Both approaches are used, but prototype approach is used first when taking an average, and later on exceptions are taken into account with the exemplar approach

Sensory-functional hypothesis, multiple-factor approach, semantic category approach, and embodied approach

The multiple-factor approach has more factors than just sensory and functional to determine how concepts are divided into categories

Information about concepts is distributed across many structures in the brain

a, c, and d are correct

1, because it imposes lower memory load and subject-relative construction is more prevalent in English

Definitional, prototype, and exemplar

Behavioral, network, and physiological

Question: Are all members of a category created equal?

Method: Participants heard the name of a color and thought of the prototype of the color, and then looked at a color and were asked to say “same” if the name of the color matched the color they were looking at

Results: Prototypical objects are affected more by priming, as the prototypical example for “green” had the higher reaction speed for saying “same” compared to a light green

Noninvasive form of brain stimulation in which a changing magnetic field is used to induce an electric current at a specific area of the brain through electromagnetic induction