semantic memory 2

semantic memory 2

1. Studies

   • Stanfield and Zwan 2001 - saw horizontal or vertical pencil and told matching or mismatching sentences i.eg the pencil went into the cup when vertical is matching, but the pencil went into the drawer when vertical is mismatching - faster recognition when the orientation implied by the sentence matched the objects orientation in the picture
   • Glenberg and Kaschak 2002 - faster judgements when sentence matched the response (opening/closing draws with flat palms or clutched fist
   • Santana and de vega 2011 - good is up, bad is down (perceptual metaphor) - matching sentence = pointing up and saying 'rise to victory', mismatching is same but pointing upwards - finding - faster presponses when the sentence matched the response movement = sentence action compatibility effect

2. The role of emotion

   • Lexical decision over visually presented negative, positive and neutral words - emotion words have a processing advantage over neutral words
   • fMRI during reading face, arm or leg action words - neural response to words was compared with brain activity during real action - words related to actions led to increased activity in the same areas activated when actually performing the corresponding action - somatotopic representation of action words in human Moto and premotor cortex
     • Pulvermuller et al - TMS to arm or leg motor cortex facilitated lexical decision to arm (e.g grasp) or leg (kick) related words but only in the left hemisphere - stimulation (low level) of motor areas facilitates action word processing - semantic representations are distributed in a systematic way throughout the entire brain
       • But - secondary task driven effect - does concept processing rely on perceptual processing only

3. Hub and spoke model (Patterson et al 2007)

   • A hybrid model of semantic memory - it contains both amodal representations (the hub) and representations that are grounded in sensory and Motor systems (the spokes) - category structures belong to the hub and are separate to what represents the content based features (the spokes)
     • Semantic detention - one of the most prominent symptoms of SD is anomia - failure to name objects, concepts and people whether in response to stimulus presentation of in spontaneous speech
       • But - does familiarity of concepts affect their organisation in the hub and spokes? how many concept spokes? is info in semantic memory in the form of single concepts?

4. Schematic knowledge

   • A schema is a well-integrated chunk of knowledge about the world, events, people or actions - broader and more flexible organisations structure than concepts e.g events and actions usually occurring when you wake up and prepare - script - e.g what does a coffee shop look like - frame
     • Schematic knowledge - how does schema impact memory and how useful is schematic knowledge - schemas allow predictions (reconstructive memory) - schemes rely on stereotypes and might lead to confirmation bias