Feb 22 Concepts/Knowledge

• Terminology: Categories


  Items grouped together according to concept; an item can be categorized into more than one category
• Memory With Aging

  • Decline in associating memories due to hippocampal shrinkage, affecting the connection of faces to names or places
• Concepts


  • Forming rules about lists features
  • Defined by the resemblance to a collection of features
  • Accessed as a function of the environment and current goals
  • Processed in different brain networks and shift depending on what is required to be accessed from a concept
• Organizing Concepts

  1. Hierarchy from General to Specific: Superordinate Level, Basic Level, Subordinate Level

  2. Cognitive Economy: Balancing the specificity of concept access for effective communication and decision-making
• Memory Differences Due to Aging

  • Age-related deficits in associative processing and hippocampal volume
  • Ability to remember associations among components of an event is critical for episodic memory
  • Older adults have problems forming associations leading to less detailed memories
• Episodic Memory: specific events or episodes from your life, including context
• Concepts: general knowledge of a category; a mental representation of it
• Terminology: Generalization


  The process of deriving a concept from many specific experiences
• Exemplar Theory: concepts are formed by comparing new instances to a stored collection of exemplars within a category

  • No single abstract prototype for a concept; every instance of a category is stored in memory, not a prototype
  • Determining if a new item is a member of a category involves retrieving exemplars and computing similarity
• Knowledge-Based Theories: categorization based on implicit knowledge or explanations rather than observable features or similarities

  • Implicit intuitive knowledge used
  • Essentialism: The idea that certain categories have an underlying reality or true nature that one cannot observe
• Rule-Based Approach: concepts are composed of necessary and sufficient features
• Exemplars: individual items within a category
• Semantic Memory: general knowledge, facts, information, and concepts unrelated to personal experiences
• Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory (HSAM)


  • A rare condition where individuals can recall the vast majority of their life experiences in great detail
  • Superior memory linked to daily experiences, not standard memory tests like list learning or number sequences
  • Linked to OCD symptoms, difficulty forgetting painful memories, and potential for social isolation due to vivid memory of past events
• Prototype Theory: concepts represented by a central tendency or "prototype" derived from exemplar similarities

  • Each category has an abstracted prototype pre-stored in memory, with exemplars included in a category network around that prototype
• Concept Learning works well for simple concepts but not for complex or ambiguous concepts
• Feature comparison between encountered items and list

  Refines what a defining feature is for a concept
• Abstracted prototype: Pre-stored in memory, represents the most common features with other members
• Perception and conceptual knowledge

  Linked as perceptual symbols
• Embodiment of the Brain

  Knowledge is stored as sensorimotor neural representations
• Feature List vs Network
• Concept Learning: involves the process of recognizing, categorizing, and understanding the various elements and patterns in our environment
• Perceptual Symbols Theory: conceptual knowledge is stored across different sensory modalities and accessed depending on the task's requirements
• Characteristic Features

  • Common but not essential for category membership
• Neuropsychological Case Studies

  Brain injury cases of people with category-specific deficits
• Concept representation

  A situation determines concept representation
• Brain injuries can selectively impair naming living things or non-living things
• Concepts: general knowledge of a category; a mental representation of it

  • are rooted in motor and sensory activity
• Network: Conceptualizes knowledge as a complex system of nodes and links, where nodes represent concepts, and links represent the relationships between these concepts
• Embodied Cognition: Accessing conceptual knowledge involves re-enacting sensory-motor experiences associated with that concept
• Brain Representations

  In an MRI scanner, participants passively read action words. Specific brain regions that process movements associated with those words were active
• Activating a concept


  Engages certain sensory-perceptions to engage mental simulation as a function of the goals of the current task
• Memory Differences Due to Aging 

  • Age-related deficits in associative processing and hippocampal volume 
  • The ability to remember associations among components of an event is critical for episodic memory 
  • Older adults have problems forming associations that leads to less detailed memories 
  • Eg.; name-face, place-person
• Memory With Aging 

  • Decline in associating memories due to hippocampal shrinkage, affecting the connection of faces to names or places
• Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory (HSAM): a rare condition in which individuals can recall the vast majority of their life experiences in great detail

  • HSAM Limitations: Superior memory linked to daily experiences, not standard memory tests like list learning or number sequences.
  • Social and Emotional Implications: Linked to OCD symptoms, difficulty forgetting painful memories, and potential for social isolation due to vivid memory of past events
• Categories: items that are grouped together according to concept

  • An item can be categorized into more than one category
• Exemplars: individual items within a category
• Hierarchy from General to Specific:

  • Superordinate Level: Most general categorization (e.g., mammals)
  • Basic Level: Common labels for objects (e.g., dog)
  • Subordinate Level: Specific labels within a category (e.g., terrier)
• Cognitive Economy: Balancing the specificity of concept access for effective communication and decision-making
• Rule-Based Approach: Concepts are composed of necessary and sufficient features