Rosch's 'The War Of The Ghosts'

ASSIGNMENT 3: REPRESENTATION OF KNOWLEDGE

AND OUR KNOWLEDGE OF WHAT WE KNOW

(1) In class and in the book, we covered a number of different aspects of how general knowledge is represented. Think about how this information could be applied to your everyday life. (a) Give an example of something you learned about prototypes and how that is relevant or used in everyday thinking. (b) Rosch proposes that basic level categories have “special status.” What does this mean, and what is an example of something illustrating this in your everyday thinking? (c) Discuss a research finding re enhanced memory for schema-consistent material and give an example from your life where you have exhibited, (d) ) Discuss a research finding re enhanced memory for schema-inconsistent material and give an example from your life where you

When Barlett asked British students to read a Native American story “The War of the Ghosts” the students were given a story that was inconsistent with their schema, so they omitted parts that didn’t make sense to them and made the story more similar to British fairy tales. In my experience studying Shakespeare, I often summarize the play through a modern lens by notetaking about misogynistic, homophobic, or racist characters that affect the other characters negatively, which shows how an inconsistent schema can cause people to try to rearrange details to make better sense.

(2) Explain what metacognition is and give two examples of situations from your life in which you use metacognition, having one example being in a school setting and the other involving a job or personal setting (e.g., tip-of-the-tongue, feeling-of-knowing, judgments of learning, metamemory, metacomprehension {note when you use any of these terms, make sure you define them}). Was your metacognition accurate or not in the examples? Then discuss how accurate in general people tend to be in terms of metamemory and metacomprehension and what factors influence their