Psychology 2135A/B Chapter Notes - Chapter 9: Semantic Dementia, Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, Eleanor Rosch

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 2135A/B
• Professor: John Paul Minda

Document Summary

Semantic memory is our memory for facts &knowledge. Conceptual knowledge knowledge that enables us to recognize objects &events &to make inferences about their properties. Concepts mental representation of a class of individual: the meaning of objects, events &abstract ideas. Categorization the process by which things are placed in categories. Family resemblance deal with the problem that definitions often do not include all definition members of a category: proposed by wittgenstein. Prototype a (cid:498)typical(cid:499) member of the category: formed by averaging category members a person has encountered in the past. Prototypicality how well an object resembles the prototype of a particular category. High-prototypical objects: have high family resemblance, statements about them are verified rapidly, they are named first, they are affected more by priming. Sentence verification technique procedure to determine how rapidly people could answer questions about an object"s category. Typicality effect ability to judge highly prototypical objects more rapidly.