SUBJECT

Conceptual Learning and Categorization

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master

Faculty of Education and Psychology

4

Semester 2

Spring semester

Aim of the course:

This course is for cognitive MA program students of ELTE. Students from other ELTE MA programs or other cognitive MA programs are also welcome. The focus of the course is the presentation of different experimental methods for testing conceptual representation and semantic memory. During the semester we will discuss the main theoretical questions of the field by presenting behavioral and neuropsychological experimental methods used at different stages of the course of ontogenesis. The aim is to outline a relevant theoretical framework which can handle the diversity of categorization behavior revealed by these methods.                                            

Learning outcome, competences

knowledge:

• relationship between theoretical questions and the chosen method
• complex nature of the higher order cognitive mechanisms
• understanding the interaction between knowledge representation systems and the other cognitive mechanisms

attitude:

• sensitivity to the methodological questions
• understanding the limits of the actual experimental results and the applied method

skills:

• ability integrate the different theories related to conceptual representation and semantic memory

Contents of the course

Topics of the course

1. Introduction: main questions and theories the knowledge representation; concepts of semantic memory and categorization
2. Experimental methods in early infancy 1: looking preference, ERP (presentation: Quinn et al’s studies)
3. Experimental methods in early infancy 2: object examination (presentation: Oakes' studies)
4. Experimental methods in early infancy 3: conditioned kicking, generalized imitation (presentation: Rovee-Collier’s and Mandler’s studies)
5. Experimental methods in late infancy 1: sequential touch (presentation: Rakison et al’s studies)
6. Experimental methods in late infancy 2: category learning via looking preference vs. object examination (presentation: Younger’s studies)
7. Experimental methods at the preschool 1: inference (presentation: Gentner’s studies)
8. Experimental methods at the preschool 2: linguistic labeling (presentation: the Sloutsky vs. Gelman debate)
9. Adulthood 1: category learning (classical paradigms) (presentation: Posner and Keele's point distortion, information integration tasks)
10. Adulthood 2: measuring semantic knowledge, neuropsychological cases (presentation: Caramazza and Lambon-Ralph’s papers)
11. Adulthood 3: dynamic models (Barsalou, Prinz, Hampton, Schank)
12. Concluding remarks: presentation of a possible general theoretical framework

Learning activities, learning methods

The form of the course is a colloquium but the activity of the students is highly expected during the semester. The presentations made by the students about an important study of a field help them to be involved to the problems we discuss during the classes.

Evaluation of outcomes

Learning requirements, mode of evaluation, criteria of evaluation:

1. Presentation (50%) students must give a presentation during the semester from one of the chosen topics of the course. The presentation is based on the papers given by the instructor.

2. Paper (50%): design a psychological experiment by using one of the learned methods; in the paper students are to present a specific theoretical problem, the method of the planned experiment, and the hypotheses for the probable results. (length: 10 000 n)

3. In case of the absence of the presentation oral exam is possible: in this case the reading list of the exam will be all the articles discussed during the semester.

Compulsory reading list (modifiable according to the specific interest of students)

Barsalou, L. W. (1999). Perceptions of perceptual symbols. Behavioral and brain sciences, 22(04), 637-660.

Hayne, H. et al. (1987). Categorization and memory retrieval by three-month-olds. Child Dev. 58, 750–767.

Mandler, J.M. and McDonough, L. (1996). Drinking and driving don’t mix: inductive generalization in infancy. Cognition 59, 307–335.

Mandler, J.M., Fivush, R. and Reznick, J.S. (1987). The development of contextual categories. Cognit. Dev. 2, 339–354.

Oakes, L. M., Coppage, D. J., and Dingel, A. (1997). By land or by sea: The role of perceptual similarity in infants’ categorization of animals. Developmental Psychology, 33, 396–407.

Quinn, P. C., Eimas, P. D., and Rosenkrantz, S. L. (1993). Evidence for representations of perceptually similar natural categories by 3-month-old and 4-month-old infants. Perception,22, 463–475.

Rakison, D.H. and Butterworth, G. (1998). Infants’ use of parts in early categorization. Dev. Psychol. 34, 49–62.

Shields, P.J. and Rovee-Collier, C. (1992). Long-term-memory for context-specific category information at 6 months. Child Dev. 63, 245–259.

Recommended reading list

• Murphy, G. L. (2002). The big book of concepts. MIT press.
• Prinz, J. J. (2002). Furnishing the mind. MIT press.
• Rosch, E. H. (1973). Natural categories. Cognitive psychology, 4(3), 328-350.
• Rosch, E. (1975). Cognitive representations of semantic categories. Journal of experimental psychology: General, 104(3), 192.
• Rosch, E., & Mervis, C. B. (1975). Family resemblances: Studies in the internal structure of categories. Cognitive psychology, 7(4), 573-605.