PSYB57H3 Chapter 4: Chapter 4 Notes
Document Summary
Chapter 4 - representation and knowledge in long-term memory. Role of knowledge in cognition: knowledge is often thoughts of as made of facts, techniques and procedures that cultures develop. Knowledge may come to a person consciously or unconsciously: knowledge is defined as information about the world that is stored in memory, ranging from everyday to the formal. It is essential for the competing functioning of mental processes and also plays a role in perception and attention: without knowledge, we cannot categorize things. Categorization is the ability to establish that a perceived entity belongs to a particular group of things that share key characteristics. Failure to categorize, makes a person similar to a camera that can register an image but cannot interpret it: once we are able to categorize an object to a category, further knowledge becomes available about the category. This idea of transitivity through knowledge enables sophisticated thought.