PSY270H5 Chapter Notes - Chapter 7: Knowledge Representation And Reasoning, Guided Imagery, Echoic Memory
Chapter 7 notes:
• Knowledge representation: the form for what you know in your mind about things, ideas
events
o First: what things are and in what form are they stored
o Second: we look at theories and decide to store our knowledge in forms of
images, symbols and propositions
o Third: we look more closely at images in our minds. How can we rotate them?
Manipulate them?
o Fourth: we examine whether separate theories regarding images and
propositions can be combined as one approach
o Last: we look at mental maps
• Two kinds of knowledge structures
o Declarative knowledge: refers to facts that can be stated. Ex: date of birth, name
of best friend
o Procedural knowledge: refers to knowledge of procedures that can be
implemented. Ex: steps in tying shoe laces, adding column of numbers or driving a
car.
• Neuropsychological studies, researchers typically use one of two methods
o They observe how normal brain responds to various cognitive tasks involving
knowledge representation
o They observe the links between various deficits in knowledge representation and
associate pathologies in the brain
• Communicating knowledge: Pictures versus words
o Astat thigs suh as hat is justie is diffiult to desie i ods ut it is
also just as hard pictorially
o Symbolic representation: meaning that the relationship between the word and
what it represents is simply random. Ex: the word cat, there is nothing inherently
catlike about the word and if you had grown up in a different country, another
word would symbolize the concept of the cat to you
o In forming words the sounds or lets must be sequenced according to rules
o In forming sentences, words also must be sequenced according to the rules
▪ Ex. This is right- the cat is under the table
▪ This is wrong- table under the cat the is
o Pictures appropriately capture concrete and spatial information in a manner
similar to whatever they represent. They convey all features simultaneously
o Words, handily capture abstract and categorical information in a manner that is
symbolic of whatever the words represent
• Picture in your mind: Mental imagery
o Imagery is the mental representation of things that are not currently seen or
sensed by the sense organs
o Mental images can even represent things that you have never experienced
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o Many pscyhologists are interested in applications of mental imagery in other
fields of pysch.
▪ Such applications include using guided imagery techniques for controlling
pain and for strengthening immune responses and otherwise promoting
health
o Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI): research in applied settings and in
the laboratory indicated that some of us are better able to create mental images
than others. The difference is measured by fMRI
o Individuals with Down syndrome, when they use mental images when hearing a
story, it improves their memory for the material as compared to when only
hearing the story.
o Mental imagery also used in occupational therapy, when individuals have brain
damage
o Images are usually stored as exact copies of physical images, but this seems a
little impossible
• Dual-code theory: images and symbols
o According to dual-code theory, we use both pictorial and verbal codes for
representing information in our minds
o These two codes organize information into knowledge that can be acted on,
stored somehow, and later retrieved for use.
o Paivio said mental images are analog codes
▪ Analog codes resemble the objects they are representing
o Our mental representations for words chiefly are represented in a symbolic code
▪ Symbolic code is a form of knowledge representation that has been
chosen randomly to stand for something that does not perceptually
resemble what is being represented
▪ A symbol may be anything that is randomly designed to stand for
something other than itself
o Paivio noted that verbal information seems to be processed differently than
pictorial information
▪ In an experiment that he designed, participants were shown a fast
sequence of pictures and sequences of words. They were asked to recall
the words or the pictures in one of two ways. One way was random, so
that they recalled as many items as possible regardless of the order in
which they were presented. The other way was in correct sequence.
Participants more easily recalled the pictures when they were allowed to
do so in any order.
o Other researchers have hypothesized that actual visual perception could interfere
with simultaneous visual imagery
• Storing knowledge as abstract concepts: propositional theory
o propositional theory: suggests that we do not store mental representations in the
form of images or mere words
o epiphenomena: secondary and derivative phenomena that occur as a results of
other more basic cognitive processes.
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o What is a proposition:
Lecture notes:
Representation of knowledge in LTM (1)
• we form a mental image and walk through that
• how do we store faces we know and objects? Do we store them as objects in LTM?
• How do we store images?
o Some people argue that the image itself is stored
o Some say it is more of an abstract knowledge when storing LTM and converted it
into an image
• Imagery vs. propositional representations
o This is more symbolic
• Mental imagery
o Mental imager is the mental representation of a non-present object or event
o If I am at the beach and staring at the people and beach, there is a visual
perception, auditory perfection and olfactory perception
o What is a mental image?
▪ Imagery is similar to perception
▪ When we form an image
• Ways to demonstrate that imagery and perception are similar events in the brain
o Interference effects: Show that visual imagery interferes more with visual
perception than with auditory perception, whereas auditory imagery interferes
more with auditory perception than with visual perception
▪ Classic study by perky
• He hass subjects sit in a room and stare at a wall and form a
mental image of a banana. That wall had a projector behind it and
it would display the object on the wall but the participants didt
know about it. The wall was blank. They starting displaying the
image of a banana and it became brighter and brighter. Perky
argued that while the person forming the image, it interfered with
the ailit to peeie the atual aaa. It ast oious to the
person in the experiment, the didt otie the pojeto. The
participants ight e so us that the eet paig attetio
that there was a projector. They could only focus on one thing
more than the other
▪ Improves experiment by Segal and Fusella showing selective interference
effects
• They did a similar one as perky. But they showed selective
interference. Subjects had headphones on and form an image of
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Document Summary
Manipulate them: fourth: we examine whether separate theories regarding images and propositions can be combined as one approach, last: we look at mental maps, two kinds of knowledge structures, declarative knowledge: refers to facts that can be stated. Ex: date of birth, name of best friend: procedural knowledge: refers to knowledge of procedures that can be implemented. Ex: the word cat, there is nothing inherently catlike about the word and if you had grown up in a different country, another word would symbolize the concept of the cat to you. In forming words the sounds or lets must be sequenced according to rules. In forming sentences, words also must be sequenced according to the rules: ex. This is right- the cat is under the table. This is wrong- table under the cat the is: pictures appropriately capture concrete and spatial information in a manner similar to whatever they represent.
