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