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The processing of polar quantifiers, and numerosity perception
Isabelle Deschamps1, Galit Agmon2, Yonatan Loewenstein3
1Department of Rehabilitation, Laval University, Canada; Department of Linguistics, McGill University, Canada.
Cognition
|July 6, 2015
Summary
Language processing is influenced by quantifier polarity, affecting numerical verification tasks. This effect was observed with linguistic probes but not non-linguistic ones, suggesting distinct processing pathways.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Science
- Psycholinguistics
- Numerical Cognition
Background:
- Language processing involves understanding quantifiers, which can have logical properties like polarity.
- Numerical estimation and comparison tasks rely on both linguistic and perceptual information.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how the polarity of quantifiers affects language processing during numerical verification.
- To compare the impact of linguistic versus non-linguistic probes on verification performance.
- To examine the interplay between perceptual difficulty (Weber's Law) and quantifier polarity effects.
Main Methods:
- Participants verified visual scenarios using sentences with quantifiers varying in polarity.
- Visual scenarios were also presented with non-linguistic inequality symbols (<, >).
- Reaction times and error rates were measured to assess performance.
Main Results:
- Perceptual difficulty significantly impacted reaction time and error rates, consistent with Weber's Law.
- Quantifier polarity affected performance, even when sentence meaning and structure were controlled.
- Non-linguistic inequality symbols did not show polarity effects.
- No interaction was found between Weber's Law effects and Polarity effects.
Conclusions:
- Quantifier polarity influences language processing in numerical tasks, distinct from perceptual factors.
- Linguistic processing of quantifiers engages specific cognitive mechanisms not present in non-linguistic comparisons.
- The findings contribute to understanding the cognitive architecture of number and language integration.
Keywords:
Language processingMonotonicityNatural language quantifiersNumerical cognitionPolarityVerification algorithmsWeber’s LawMore Related Videos
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