cognitive processes psy 334 - cpp
TRANSCRIPT
Cognitive Processes
PSY 334
Chapter 5 – Abstraction of
Information into Memory
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?
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
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.
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.
Wanner’s Results
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.
Mandler & Ritchey’s Stimuli
Droodles
Ship arriving too late to save a
drowning witch
Man playing trombone in
phone booth
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.
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.
Gernsbacher’s Stimuli
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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)
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.
Sample Propositional Network
How to Draw a Network
1. Use Kintsch’s notation to write the
propositions contained in your
sentence.
2. Draw a node for each proposition.
a. It doesn’t matter where you draw them.
b. Nothing goes inside the nodes.
c. Arguments & relations are the link labels.
3. Shared arguments connect nodes to
each other.
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”.
Weisberg’s Stimuli
Subjects cued with “slow” said “children” and never “bread”.
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.
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 “does this describe what you read
about?”
Faster at saying horizontal nail with wall
and vertical nail with floor.
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.
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
Slower to
confirm
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
Freelisting Task (Demo)
On a sheet of scratch paper, please
write as many names of animals as you
can think of.
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.
Sample Category Hierarchy
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
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.
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.
Isa Statements for House
Isa: building
Parts: rooms
Materials: woord, brick, stone
Function: human dwelling
Shape: rectilinear, triangular
Size: 100-10,000 square feet
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
Brewer & Treyans Room
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.
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.
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.
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
Two Theories
What happens mentally when we categorize?
Two theories are being debated.
Abstraction theory -- we abstract and store the general properties of instances.
Prototype theory.
Instance theory -- we store the multiple instances themselves and then compare average distances among them.
Drawings of Artificial Animals
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.
Two Patients with Impaired
Knowledge of Living Things