Concept Modeling

So we began working on building our own cognitive neural network models using a simple spreadsheet. We're modeling the ways different patterns and features are mapped and how a neural network model might adapt to learning situations as it gains more data and begins to understand the weights of the feature nodes.

While trying to better understand this, I stumbled upon the concept of Semantic relatedness, algorithms and other means for determining the relative meaning of other words, especially through the distance two words are from each other in meaning. One of the more powerful ways of determining semantic relatedness is through Google distance, how related two words are in terms of google searches. Specifically, one can enumerate this idea by understanding the number of hits for two search terms and the overlap of two terms.

Thus, an equation has been developed for this:


Where M is the number of google pages searched for and f(x) and f(y) the number of hits for the corresponding search terms.

As I look at this kind of model, I wonder if our mind works similarly, in that we do a proverbial Google search and see how related two words or concepts are by the number of "results" (categories) they fall under and make a judgment based on the kind of overlap there is. I think I'll want to explore semantic similarity and related concepts more.

Concepts: Representing knowledge

The next section reviews the idea of concepts and representing knowledge. Although the book focuses on social knowledge, it's evident that other types of knowledge can be represented. In fact, it's easier for us as psychologists to conceptualize the idea of knowledge about things than the idea of knowledges about people. It's easier to think of the idea and category of "chair" than it is for something like "extrovert."

Concepts are the basis for cognition. Our cognitive processes would be highly inefficient if we had no way to make inferences about an object based on its categorization. When I see a pen, I don't have to spend time trying to ascertain what it does and how to use it. Even if I've never seen this particular pen before, my experiences with other pens tell me that it's likely to be useful for writing and I would be familiar with how to hold it.

This makes life a great deal simpler than if we didn't have a way to categorize and infer things about objects. It gets messier with people, however. Stereotypes are an excellent example of this. Even though most of us don't like to think of ourselves as constantly stereotyping people and making inferences about people based on initial appearances, I imagine that most of us do. Again, life would be harder if we didn't. We may talk for someone for a few minutes and make some generalizations about how they behave and change the way we will act around them accordingly. If I talk to someone for a while and they misuse grammar and seem to have a low level vocabulary, I'm not likely to strike up a conversation about math. However, a lower level of English ability certainly doesn't imply a low level math ability. Yet, I'm still likely to put such a person in a category of "unable to understand higher math" just because of a subject-verb disagreement!

We're not on the chapter about stereotypes yet, but I'm very interested to learn more about and how we use them in both positive and negative ways.

Introduction: Social Cognition

The name of the primary text for this course is Social Cognition: Making Sense of People by Ziva Kunda. The first chapter gives an overview of the book and gives a bit of an overview to social cognition. It makes the point that the notion that motives can influence our beliefs lies at the core of social psychology theories. This point is very interesting to me, especially as someone who has studied pastoral theology and religious theology in general. Why do we believe what we believe? Do we believe what we believe because it conflicts the least with our preconceived ideas? Or is it that we want to believe what makes sense?

Part of what is interesting about social cognition is that it tries to make sense of social events. Why does one person react completely differently from another to the same set of given circumstances? How does our mood affect how we perceive and remember things.

I'll be very interested to learn about modeling in this course. How can the mind be understood in a mathematical, testable way? Can we set up an algorithm that can simulate the way we categorize and learn? I'm a double major: psychology and mathematics, and it's always interesting to see bridges between the two. I enjoy watching the show Numb3rs because it often shows fairly good mathematics probing into the human psyche. It's amazing that what we do is often understandable in mathematical patterns. What we see as random behavior can often be predicted when given enough data.