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Related Experiment Video

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A Psychophysics Paradigm for the Collection and Analysis of Similarity Judgments

A Psychophysics Paradigm for the Collection and Analysis of Similarity Judgments

Published on: March 1, 2022

Events and objects are similar cognitive entities.

Anna Papafragou¹, Yue Ji²

¹Department of Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania, 3401-C Walnut St., Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA.

Cognitive Psychology

|May 13, 2023

Summary

Cognitive science reveals that our brains represent bounded events and objects similarly, and unbounded events and substances similarly, even without language. This suggests a shared underlying perceptual-cognitive system for understanding the world.

Keywords:

Aspect Boundedness Event cognition Individuation Object Telicity

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Area of Science:

Cognitive Science
Psycholinguistics
Event Cognition

Background:

Linguistic theories propose parallels between temporal (events) and spatial (objects) representations.
Bounded predicates (e.g., fix a car) are analogous to count nouns (e.g., sandcastle).
Unbounded predicates (e.g., drive a car) are analogous to mass nouns (e.g., sand).

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate non-linguistic, perceptual-cognitive parallels between event and object representation.
To test if atomicity principles guide categorization of events and their extension to objects/substances.
To explore spontaneous connections between mental representations of events and objects.

Main Methods:

Participants categorized bounded vs. unbounded events.
Category extension tasks from events to objects/substances.
Training studies on event-object mappings.
Assessment of spontaneous event-object associations.

Main Results:

Viewers successfully extended event categories to corresponding object/substance categories.
Learned event-object mappings aligned with atomicity (bounded-object, unbounded-substance).
Failed to learn mappings violating atomicity.
Spontaneous, untrained connections between events and objects were observed.

Conclusions:

Perceptual-cognitive systems exhibit striking similarities in representing events and objects.
Atomicity is a fundamental principle in non-linguistic categorization of events and objects.
Findings have implications for event cognition theories and the language-thought relationship.