Victor Gomes , Rebecca Doherty , Daniel Smits , Susan Goldin-Meadow , John C. Trueswell , Roman Feiman
{"title":"It's not just what we don't know: The mapping problem in the acquisition of negation","authors":"Victor Gomes , Rebecca Doherty , Daniel Smits , Susan Goldin-Meadow , John C. Trueswell , Roman Feiman","doi":"10.1016/j.cogpsych.2023.101592","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cogpsych.2023.101592","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>How do learners learn what <em>no</em> and <em>not</em> mean when they are only presented with what is? Given its complexity, abstractness, and roles in logic, truth-functional negation might be a conceptual accomplishment. As a result, young children’s gradual acquisition of negation words might be due to their undergoing a gradual conceptual change that is necessary to represent those words’ logical meaning. However, it’s also possible that linguistic expressions of negation take time to learn because of children’s gradually increasing grasp of their language. To understand what <em>no</em> and <em>not</em> mean, children might first need to understand the rest of the sentences in which those words are used. We provide experimental evidence that conceptually equipped learners (adults) face the same acquisition challenges that children do when their access to linguistic information is restricted, which simulates how much language children understand at different points in acquisition. When watching a silenced video of naturalistic uses of negators by parents speaking to their children, adults could tell when the parent was prohibiting the child and struggled with inferring that negators were used to express logical negation. However, when provided with additional information about what else the parent said, guessing that the parent had expressed logical negation became easy for adults. Though our findings do not rule out that young learners also undergo conceptual change, they show that increasing understanding of language alone, with no accompanying conceptual change, can account for the gradual acquisition of negation words.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":50669,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Psychology","volume":"145 ","pages":"Article 101592"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10576150","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Norm conflicts and epistemic modals","authors":"Niels Skovgaard-Olsen , John Cantwell","doi":"10.1016/j.cogpsych.2023.101591","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cogpsych.2023.101591","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Statements containing epistemic modals (e.g., “by spring 2023 most European countries may have the Covid-19 pandemic under control”) are common expressions of epistemic uncertainty. In this paper, previous published findings (Knobe & Yalcin, 2014; Khoo & Phillips, 2018) on the opposition between Contextualism and Relativism for epistemic modals are re-examined. It is found that these findings contain a substantial degree of individual variation. To investigate whether participants differ in their interpretations of epistemic modals, an experiment with multiple phases and sessions is conducted to classify participants according to the three semantic theories of Relativism, Contextualism, and Objectivism. Through this study, some of the first empirical evidence for the kind of truth-value shifts postulated by semantic Relativism is presented. It is furthermore found that participants’ disagreement judgments match their truth evaluations and that participants are capable of distinguishing between truth and justification. In a second experimental session, it is investigated whether participants thus classified follow the norm of retraction which Relativism uses to account for argumentation with epistemic modals. Here the results are less favorable for Relativism. In a second experiment, these results are replicated and the normative beliefs of participants concerning the norm of retraction are investigated following work on measuring norms by Bicchieri (2017). Again, it is found that on average participants show no strong preferences concerning the norm of retraction for epistemic modals. Yet, it was found that participants who had committed to Objectivism and had training in logic applied the norm of retraction to might-statements. These results present a substantial challenge to the account of argumentation with epistemic modals presented in MacFarlane (2014), as discussed.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":50669,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Psychology","volume":"145 ","pages":"Article 101591"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10560201","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Dale J. Cohen , Monica K. Campbell , Philip T. Quinlan
{"title":"Psychological value theory: A computational cognitive model of charitable giving","authors":"Dale J. Cohen , Monica K. Campbell , Philip T. Quinlan","doi":"10.1016/j.cogpsych.2023.101593","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cogpsych.2023.101593","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Charitable giving involves a complex economic and social decision because the giver expends resources for goods or services they will never receive. Although psychologists have identified numerous factors that influence charitable giving, there currently exists no unifying computational model of charitable choice. Here, we submit one such model, based within the strictures of Psychological Value Theory (PVT). In four experiments, we assess whether charitable giving is driven by the perceived Psychological Value of the recipient. Across all four experiments, we simultaneously predict response choice and response time with high accuracy. In a fifth experiment, we show that PVT predicts charitable giving more accurately than an account based on competence and warmth. PVT accurately predicts which charity a respondent will choose to donate to and separately, whether a respondent will choose to donate at all. PVT models the cognitive processes underlying charitable donations and it provides a computational framework for integrating known influences on charitable giving. For example, we show that in-group preference influences charitable giving by changing the Psychological Values of the options, rather than by bringing about a response bias toward the in-group.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":50669,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Psychology","volume":"145 ","pages":"Article 101593"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10211291","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Rolando Bonandrini, Simona Amenta, Simone Sulpizio, Marco Tettamanti, Alessia Mazzucchelli, Marco Marelli
{"title":"Form to meaning mapping and the impact of explicit morpheme combination in novel word processing","authors":"Rolando Bonandrini, Simona Amenta, Simone Sulpizio, Marco Tettamanti, Alessia Mazzucchelli, Marco Marelli","doi":"10.1016/j.cogpsych.2023.101594","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cogpsych.2023.101594","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>In the present study, we leveraged computational methods to explore the extent to which, relative to direct access to semantics from orthographic cues, the additional appreciation of morphological cues is advantageous while inducing the meaning of affixed pseudo-words. We re-analyzed data from a study on a lexical decision task for affixed pseudo-words. We considered a parsimonious model only including semantic variables (namely, semantic neighborhood density, entropy, magnitude, stem proximity) derived through a word-form-to-meaning approach (<em>ngram</em>-based). We then explored the extent to which the addition of equivalent semantic variables derived by combining semantic information from morphemes (<em>combination</em>-based) improved the fit of the statistical model explaining human data. Results suggest that semantic information can be extracted from arbitrary clusters of letters, yet a computational model of semantic access also including a <em>combination</em>-based strategy based on explicit morphological information better captures the cognitive mechanisms underlying human performance. This is particularly evident when participants recognize affixed pseudo-words as meaningful stimuli.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":50669,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Psychology","volume":"145 ","pages":"Article 101594"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10212250","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Serial attention to serial memory: The psychological refractory period in forward and backward cued recall","authors":"Gordon D. Logan, Simon D. Lilburn, Jana E. Ulrich","doi":"10.1016/j.cogpsych.2023.101583","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cogpsych.2023.101583","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Guided by the conjecture that memory retrieval is attention turned inward, we examined serial attention in serial memory, combining the psychological refractory period (PRP) procedure from attention research with cued recall of two items from brief six-item lists. We report six experiments showing robust PRP effects in cued recall from memory (1–4) and cued report from perceptual displays (5–6), which suggest that memory retrieval requires the same attentional bottleneck as “retrieval” from perception. There were strong direction effects in each memory experiment. Response time (RT) was shorter and accuracy was higher when the cues occurred in the forward direction (left-to-right, top-to-bottom, first-to-last), replicating differences between forward and backward serial recall. Cue positions had strong effects on RT and accuracy in the memory experiments (1–4). The pattern suggested that subjects find cued items in memory by stepping through the list from the beginning or the end, with a preference for starting at the beginning. The perceptual experiments (5–6) showed weak effects of position that were more consistent with direct access. In all experiments, the distance between the cues in the list (lag) had weak effects, suggesting that subjects searched for each cue from the beginning or end of the list more often than they moved through the list from the first cue to the second. Direction, distance, and lag effects on RT and inter-response interval changed with SOA in a manner that suggested they affect bottleneck or pre-bottleneck processes that create and execute a plan for successive retrievals. We conclude that sequential retrieval from memory and sequential attention to perception engage the same computations and we show how computational models of memory can be interpreted as models of attention focused on memory.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":50669,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Psychology","volume":"145 ","pages":"Article 101583"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10574688","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A spatially continuous diffusion model of visual working memory","authors":"Alex Fennell, R. Ratcliff","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.4352541","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4352541","url":null,"abstract":"We present results from five visual working memory (VWM) experiments in which participants were briefly shown between 2 and 6 colored squares. They were then cued to recall the color of one of the squares and they responded by choosing the color on a continuous color wheel. The experiments provided response proportions and response time (RT) measures as a function of angle for the choices. Current VWM models for this task include discrete models that assume an item is either within working memory or not and resource models that assume that memory strength varies as a function of the number of items. Because these models do not include processes that allow them to account for RT data, we implemented them within the spatially continuous diffusion model (SCDM, Ratcliff, 2018) and use the experimental data to evaluate these combined models. In the SCDM, evidence retrieved from memory is represented as a spatially continuous normal distribution and this drives the decision process until a criterion (represented as a 1-D line) is reached, which produces a decision. Noise in the accumulation process is represented by continuous Gaussian process noise over spatial position. The models that fit best from the discrete and resource-based classes converged on a common model that had a guessing component and that allowed the height of the normal memory-strength distribution to vary with number of items. The guessing component was implemented as a regular decision process driven by a flat evidence distribution, a zero-drift process. The combination of choice and RT data allows models that were not identifiable based on choice data alone to be discriminated.","PeriodicalId":50669,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Psychology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2023-08-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48812020","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Keeping quantifier meaning in mind: Connecting semantics, cognition, and pragmatics","authors":"Tyler Knowlton , John Trueswell , Anna Papafragou","doi":"10.1016/j.cogpsych.2023.101584","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cogpsych.2023.101584","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>A complete theory of the meaning of linguistic expressions needs to explain their semantic properties, their links to non-linguistic cognition, and their use in communication. Even though in principle interconnected, these areas are generally not pursued in tandem. We present a novel take on the semantics-cognition-pragmatics interface. We propose that formal semantic differences in expressions’ meanings lead those meanings to activate distinct cognitive systems, which in turn have downstream effects on when speakers prefer to use those expressions. As a case study, we focus on the quantifiers “each” and “every”, which can be used to talk about the same state of the world, but have been argued to differ in meaning. In particular, we adopt a mentalistic proposal about these quantifiers on which “each” has a purely individualistic meaning that interfaces with the psychological system for representing object-files, whereas “every” has a meaning that implicates a group and interfaces with the psychological system for representing ensembles. In seven experiments, we demonstrate that this account correctly predicts both known and newly-observed constraints on how “each” and “every” are pragmatically used. More generally, this integrated approach to semantics, cognition, and pragmatics suggests that canonical patterns of language use can be affected in predictable ways by fine-grained differences in semantic meanings and the cognitive systems to which those meanings connect.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":50669,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Psychology","volume":"144 ","pages":"Article 101584"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2023-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9858810","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"What’s so hard about hierarchical control? Pinpointing processing constraints within cue-based and serial-order control structures","authors":"Melissa E. Moss , Ulrich Mayr","doi":"10.1016/j.cogpsych.2023.101582","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cogpsych.2023.101582","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Most task spaces require a hierarchical structure, where decisions on one level are contingent on previous decisions made on one or more higher levels. While it is a truism that increasing the number of hierarchical levels makes it harder to solve a given task, the exact nature of this “number-of-levels” effect is not clear. On the one hand, processing costs might be strictly “local,” incurred only when higher-level settings need to be updated, while otherwise lower-level decisions are insulated from the presence of higher-level settings (local updating costs with ballistic control). On the other hand, maintaining and integrating more complex hierarchical structures could require overall greater representational resources, negatively affecting each individual decision within the represented task space (global integration/maintenance costs). Further, navigation through hierarchical structures can be guided either through prompts in the environment (cue-based), or through sequential plans (serial-order based), with potentially distinct maintenance and updating demands. In two experiments, we assessed performance as a function of hierarchical level and format (serial-order vs. cue-based). Model comparisons showed that the pattern of costs in the serial-order format was consistent with a global maintenance/integration account. In contrast, in the cue-based format, costs arose at updating points and when one additional relevant level beyond the current decision was relevant, while additional levels produced no further costs. This overall constellation of costs can be explained by assuming that each decision requires checking the immediately relevant higher-level context for that decision. For cue-based control, this context involves the “next-level-up” rule, whereas in the serial-order format, each trial requires updating of the current position within the sequence, which in turn requires integration across all relevant hierarchical levels.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":50669,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Psychology","volume":"144 ","pages":"Article 101582"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2023-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10044804","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Events and objects are similar cognitive entities","authors":"Anna Papafragou , Yue Ji","doi":"10.1016/j.cogpsych.2023.101573","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cogpsych.2023.101573","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Logico-semantic theories have long noted parallels between the linguistic representation of temporal entities (events) and spatial entities (objects): bounded (or telic) predicates such as <em>fix a car</em> resemble count nouns such as <em>sandcastle</em> because they are “atoms” that have well-defined boundaries, contain discrete minimal parts and cannot be divided arbitrarily. By contrast, unbounded (or atelic) phrases such as <em>drive a car</em> resemble mass nouns such as <em>sand</em> in that they are unspecified for atomic features. Here, we demonstrate for the first time the parallels in the <em>perceptual-cognitive</em> representation of events and objects even in entirely non-linguistic tasks. Specifically, after viewers form categories of bounded or unbounded events, they can extend the category to objects or substances respectively (Experiments 1 and 2). Furthermore, in a training study, people successfully learn event-to-object mappings that respect atomicity (i.e., grouping bounded events with objects and unbounded events with substances) but fail to acquire the opposite, atomicity-violating mappings (Experiment 3). Finally, viewers can spontaneously draw connections between events and objects without any prior training (Experiment 4). These striking similarities between the mental representation of events and objects have implications for current theories of event cognition, as well as the relationship between language and thought.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":50669,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Psychology","volume":"143 ","pages":"Article 101573"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9604614","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The role of rehearsal and reminding in the recall of categorized word lists","authors":"Geoff Ward , Lydia Tan","doi":"10.1016/j.cogpsych.2023.101563","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cogpsych.2023.101563","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Most theories of free recall emphasize the importance of retrieval in explaining temporal and semantic regularities in recall; rehearsal mechanisms are often absent or limit rehearsal to a subset of what was last rehearsed. However, in three experiments using the overt rehearsal method, we show clear evidence that just-presented items act as retrieval cues during encoding (study-phase retrieval) with prior related items rehearsed despite well over a dozen intervening items. Experiment 1 examined free recall of categorized and uncategorized lists of 32 words. In Experiments 2 and 3, we presented categorized lists of 24, 48, and 64 words for free recall or cued recall, with the category exemplars blocked in successive list positions (Experiment 2) or randomized throughout the list (Experiment 3). The probability of rehearsing a prior word was affected by its semantic similarity to the just-presented item, and the frequency and recency of its prior rehearsals. These rehearsal data suggest alternative interpretations to well-known recall phenomena. With randomized designs, the serial position curves were reinterpreted by when words were last rehearsed (which contributed to the list length effects), and semantic clustering and temporal contiguity effects at output were reinterpreted by whether words were co-rehearsed during study. The contrast with the blocked designs suggests that recall is sensitive to the relative (not absolute) recency of targeted list items. We discuss the benefits of incorporating rehearsal machinery into computational models of episodic memory, and suggest that the same retrieval processes that generate the recalls are used to generate the rehearsals.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":50669,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Psychology","volume":"143 ","pages":"Article 101563"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9978563","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}