What is semantic memory
organized knowledge about the world, including general knowledge, lexical or language knowledge, and conceptual knowledge
category
is a set of objects that belong together
Rosch and Mervis 1975
examined the role of the prototype in family resemblance categories.
Schemas
general knowledge about a situation, event, or person
concept
the mental representation of a category
Family resemblance
This means that no single attribute is shared by all means of a concept; however, each example has at least one attribute in common.
Inference
logical interpretations and conclusions not part of the original stimulus
give an example of semantic memory
Tegucigalpa is the capital of Honduras.
prototype
Is the Item that is the best and most typical example of a category; a prototype, therefore, is the ideal representative of this category.
Prototype Approach
you decide whether an item belongs to a category by comparing it to a prototype
We organize categories on the basis of the ideal representation of that category.
what is Exemplar Approach, provide an example
we first learn information about some specific examples of a concept and decide whether an item belongs to a category by comparing it to examples of that category.
We organize information on the basis of examples of a concept.
Situated Cognition Approach
our knowledge depends on the context that surrounds us. we make us of information in the immediate environment or situation.
Semantic memory allow us to
* organize objects according to concepts *make inferences going beyond the information given
read sentence below and make an inference
*when Lisa was on her way back from the with the balloon, she fell and the balloon floated away.
one of many inferences. Lisa is probably a female child, not a 40-year-old man, and she probably bought balloons in the store.
Graded structure
the continuum from most representative to least representative (prototypical) members.