| Popis: |
A number of recent papers have advanced the theory of fuzzy traces and cognitive gist as an alternative to the Piagetian and information-processing approaches to cognitive development. Since the elaboration of this fuzzy trace theory has been primarily qualitative in nature, mathematical modeling may be useful in developing more precise formulations of fuzzy trace theory suited to quantitative testing. We have used the principles of fuzzy trace theory to model gist formation in spreading activation networks. With this method we create a gist operator that processes and extracts gist from a class of digraphic representations of a narrative story′s causal structure, as introduced by Trabasso and Sperry (1985). Since a culture′s system of understanding and interpreting the world is carried in large part by stories and texts, the ability to process narrative information is fundamental to understanding human psychological development. The gist arising from the causal structure of simple stories is studied in detail with our modeling method. We discuss general issues involved in creating gist operators, compare our results to those of Trabasso and van den Broek (1985), and comment on issues involved in the mathematical modeling of fuzzy trace theory processes. |
