Cognitive Processes PSY 334

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Cognitive ProcessesPSY 334

• Chapter 5 Abstraction of Information into Memory

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Midterm Results
Score Grade N
42-53 A 11
37-41 B 6
32-36 C 5
27-31 D 13
0-26 F 7
Top score 50 Top score for curve 47 (2
people)
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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?

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Demos

• Features of a penny
• http//newpenny.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Lin
  coln_Penny_Obverse.jpg
• Eidetic imagery
• http//www.gis.net/tbirch/x2.htm

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Wanners 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.

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Wanners Experiment

• People do not remember exact wording.
• Wanners 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.

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Wanners Results
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Memory for Visual Information

• Memory for pictures is very strong and better
  than for words.
• Mandlers study token vs type changes.
• Type meaning
• Token detail
• Type changes were easier to identify than token.
• Picture memory depends on meaning.

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

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Retention of Detail

• Perceptual detail is encoded but quickly
  forgotten.
• Gernsbachers picture reversals
• 10 sec delay 79 accuracy
• 10 min delay 57 accuracy.
• Andersons story sentences
• Immediate test 99 correct
• 2 min delay 56 correct
• Delay does not affect meaning accuracy.

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Gernsbachers Stimuli
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Andersons 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.

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Implications for Memory

• Memory is enhanced if people can attach meaning
  to material.
• Loud and fast rehearsal doesnt 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.

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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.

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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.

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Kintschs 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.

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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.

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Kintschs 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.

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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

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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)

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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.

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Sample Propositional Network
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How to Draw a Network

• Use Kintschs notation to write the propositions
  contained in your sentence.
• Draw a node for each proposition.
• It doesnt matter where you draw them.
• Nothing goes inside the nodes.
• Arguments relations are the link labels.
• Shared arguments connect nodes to each other.

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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.

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Weisbergs Stimuli
Subjects cued with slow said children and
never bread.
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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.

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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.

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Paivios 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 Barsalous theory too
  all-encompassing to be testable.

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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
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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

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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.

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Freelisting Task (Demo)

• On a sheet of scratch paper, please write as many
  names of animals as you can think of.

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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.

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Sample Category Hierarchy
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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

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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.

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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.

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Isa Statements for House

• Isa building
• Parts rooms
• Materials woord, brick, stone
• Function human dwelling
• Shape rectilinear, triangular
• Size 100-10,000 square feet

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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

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Brewer Treyans Room
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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.

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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.

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Context Changes Boundaries
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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.

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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

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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.

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Drawings of Artificial Animals
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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.

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Two Patients with Impaired Knowledge of Living
Things