Conceptual Representation

Conceptual Representation
Author: Helen Moss
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2003
Genre: Cognition
ISBN: 9781841699585

This special issue on conceptual representation contains invited papers from leading researchers across the range of cognitive science disciplines, addressing the nature of semantic and conceptual representation in the mind and brain.

New Trends in Conceptual Representation

New Trends in Conceptual Representation
Author: Ellin Kofsky Scholnick
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2013-05-13
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1135060134

Published in 1983, New Trends in Conceptual Representation is a valuable contribution to the field of Developmental Psychology.

Meaning, Frames, and Conceptual Representation

Meaning, Frames, and Conceptual Representation
Author: Thomas Gamerschlag
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2015-06-19
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3110720124

The articles in this volume present contemporary and original research on linguistic meaning, concept formation and conceptual analysis. A central theme across the articles is the question of how concepts are structured, how they are represented in the mind, and how they are expressed in language. Two introductory papers on concept types and frames set out the crucial role of attributes and frames for the representation of concepts. The topics of the contributions range from the interrelation between determination and reference of nominal expressions, the verbal and adjectival expression of attributes, and the analysis of metonymy to the frame-based representation of action-related concepts and the classification of mental disorders in psychiatry. The collection of articles provided by this volume will be of interest to researchers and advanced students in the fields of semantics, pragmatics, philosophy of mind, and the cognitive sciences.

Conceptual Spaces

Conceptual Spaces
Author: Peter Gardenfors
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2004-01-30
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 9780262572194

Within cognitive science, two approaches currently dominate the problem of modeling representations. The symbolic approach views cognition as computation involving symbolic manipulation. Connectionism, a special case of associationism, models associations using artificial neuron networks. Peter Gärdenfors offers his theory of conceptual representations as a bridge between the symbolic and connectionist approaches. Symbolic representation is particularly weak at modeling concept learning, which is paramount for understanding many cognitive phenomena. Concept learning is closely tied to the notion of similarity, which is also poorly served by the symbolic approach. Gärdenfors's theory of conceptual spaces presents a framework for representing information on the conceptual level. A conceptual space is built up from geometrical structures based on a number of quality dimensions. The main applications of the theory are on the constructive side of cognitive science: as a constructive model the theory can be applied to the development of artificial systems capable of solving cognitive tasks. Gärdenfors also shows how conceptual spaces can serve as an explanatory framework for a number of empirical theories, in particular those concerning concept formation, induction, and semantics. His aim is to present a coherent research program that can be used as a basis for more detailed investigations.

New Trends in Conceptual Representation

New Trends in Conceptual Representation
Author: Ellin Kofsky Scholnick
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2013-05-13
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1135060126

Published in 1983, New Trends in Conceptual Representation is a valuable contribution to the field of Developmental Psychology.

Accessing Conceptual Representations for Speaking

Accessing Conceptual Representations for Speaking
Author: Peter Indefrey
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
Total Pages: 143
Release: 2016-10-31
Genre:
ISBN: 2889450112

For speaking, words in the lexicon are somehow activated from conceptual representations but we know surprisingly little about how this works precisely. Which of the attributes of the concept DOG (e.g. BARKS, IS WALKED WITH A LEASH, CARNIVORE, ANIMATE) have to be activated in a given situation to be able to select the word ‘dog’? Are there things we know about dogs that are always activated for naming and others that are only activated in certain contexts or even never? To date, investigations on lexical access in speaking have largely focused on the effects of distractor nouns on the naming latency of a target noun. We have learned that distractors from the same semantic category (e.g. ‘cat’) hinder naming, but associatively related distractors (‘leash’) may facilitate or hinder naming. However, associatively related words can have all kinds of semantic relationships to a target word, and, with few exceptions, the effects of specific semantic relationships other than membership in the same category as the target concept have not been systematically investigated. This special issue aims at moving forward towards a more detailed account of how precisely conceptual information is used to access the lexicon in speaking and what corresponding format of conceptual representations needs to be assumed.

The Conceptual Representation and the Measurement of Psychological Forces

The Conceptual Representation and the Measurement of Psychological Forces
Author: Kurt Lewin
Publisher: Martino Fine Books
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2013-11
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 9781614275190

2013 Reprint of 1938 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. Kurt Lewin (1890-1947) was a German-American psychologist, known as one of the modern pioneers of social, organizational, and applied psychology. Lewin is often recognized as the "founder of social psychology" and was one of the first to study group dynamics and organizational development. Lewin developed the concept of force field analysis, which provides a framework for looking at the factors (forces) that influence a situation, originally social situations. It looks at forces that are either driving movement toward a goal (helping forces) or blocking movement toward a goal (hindering forces). The principle, developed by Kurt Lewin, is a significant contribution to the fields of social science, psychology, social psychology, organizational development, process management, and change management. This book is an early effort to establish the principles of his force field analysis. An attempt is made to describe the position of the concept of force in psychology and to discuss major methods of measuring psychological forces. One of the outstanding properties of force is its directedness. Direction in psychology cannot be defined as physical direction and cannot be determined by Euclidian geometry. A geometry applicable in psychology is that of hodological space. The geometrical properties of this space are described, and examples of its application in determining directions and distances in the life space are offered. The conceptual properties of the construct of force are given, as well as a definition coordinating it with observable processes. The conceptual and dynamic relation between psychological forces, valences, and tensions are discussed, as are certain basic theories concerning the relation between need, environment, and the "mechanics" of locomotion. Various methods of measuring forces and valences are surveyed, especially those related to opposing forces and to velocity of locomotion, including velocity and restlessness, consumption, translocation, and learning. The problem of the structure of the force field and of overlapping force fields is discussed, including several choice and conflict situations with stable and labile equilibria.

The Concept of Representation

The Concept of Representation
Author: Hanna F. Pitkin
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2023-04-28
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0520340507

Being concerned with representation, this book is about an idea, a concept, a word. It is primarily a conceptual analysis, not a historical study of the way in which representative government has evolved, nor yet an empirical investigation of the behavior of contemporary representatives or the expectations voters have about them. Yet, although the book is about a word, it is not about mere words, not merely about words. For the social philosopher, for the social scientist, words are not "mere"; they are the tools of his trade and a vital part of his subject matter. Since human beings are not merely political animals but also language-using animals, their behavior is shaped by their ideas. What they do and how they do it depends upon how they see themselves and their world, and this in turn depends upon the concepts through which they see. Learning what "representation" means and learning how to represent are intimately connected. But even beyond this, the social theorist sees the world through a network of concepts. Our words define and delimit our world in important ways, and this is particularly true of the world of human and social things. For a zoologist may capture a rare specimen and simply observe it; but who can capture an instance of representation (or of power, or of interest)? Such things, too, can be observed, but the observation always presupposes at least a rudimentary conception of what representation (or power, or interest) is, what counts as representation, where it leaves off and some other phenomenon begins. Questions about what representation is, or is like, are not fully separable from the question of what "representation" means. This book approaches the former questions by way of the latter. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1972. Being concerned with representation, this book is about an idea, a concept, a word. It is primarily a conceptual analysis, not a historical study of the way in which representative government has evolved, nor yet an empirical investigation of the behavior

The Bilingual Mental Lexicon

The Bilingual Mental Lexicon
Author: Aneta Pavlenko
Publisher: Multilingual Matters
Total Pages: 267
Release: 2009-01-22
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1847691250

How are words organized in the bilingual mind? How are they linked to concepts? How do bi- and multilinguals process words in their multiple languages? Contributions to this volume offer up-to-date answers to these questions and provide a detailed introduction to interdisciplinary approaches used to investigate the bilingual lexicon.

Representation in Cognitive Science

Representation in Cognitive Science
Author: Nicholas Shea
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2018-09-19
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0192542206

Our thoughts are meaningful. We think about things in the outside world; how can that be so? This is one of the deepest questions in contemporary philosophy. Ever since the 'cognitive revolution', states with meaning-mental representations have been the key explanatory construct of the cognitive sciences. But there is still no widely accepted theory of how mental representations get their meaning. Powerful new methods in cognitive neuroscience can now reveal information processing in unprecedented detail. They show how the brain performs complicated calculations on neural representations. Drawing on this cutting-edge research, Nicholas Shea uses a series of case studies from the cognitive sciences to develop a naturalistic account of the nature of mental representation. His approach is distinctive in focusing firmly on the 'subpersonal' representations that pervade so much of cognitive science. The diversity and depth of the case studies, illustrated by numerous figures, make this book quite unlike any previous treatment. It is important reading for philosophers of psychology and philosophers of mind, and of considerable interest to researchers throughout the cognitive sciences.