Marcel Adam Just

Comprehension of negation with quantification

Three experiments were carried out to compare the processing of three kinds of affirmative and negative sentences. In the first experiment, S s were timed while they read a sentence, looked at a dot array, and then judged the sentence true or false with respect to the picture. The results showed that explicit syntactic negatives (e.g., None of the dots are red ) and implicit syntactic negatives (e.g., Few …) were processed differently than semantic negatives which were referentially equivalent to few (e.g., A minority …). All three types of negatives took longer to verify than affirmatives. Two further experiments confirmed that S s coded the arrays accompanying the implicit syntactic negatives ( few ) and semantic negatives ( a minority ) in terms of the larger and smaller subsets of dots, respectively, thus accounting for the difference in processing.

Drawing Inferences from the Presuppositions and Implications of Affirmative and Negative Sentences.

This study examined the effects of negation on how people make use of information in the presuppositions and implications of sentences. Subjects were timed as they made true-false judgments of sentences like If John forgot to let the dog out, then the dog is supposed to be in. The verbs were either positive (for example, remember) or inherently negative (forget); the conclusions interrogated either presuppositions (the dog is supposed to be out) or implications (the dog is out). Subjects found it easier to verify positive components as true, but negative components as false. This happened regardless of the polarity (positive or negative) of the parent sentence. Also, subjects took longer on negative verbs, but by an equal amount on both components, even though such negation does not logically affect presuppositions. This suggests that people may examine implications before presuppositions regardless of which component is interrogated.

ON THE MEETING OF SEMANTICS AND PERCEPTION

Publisher Summary Perceptual events, like linguistic events, are interpreted when they are processed, that is, when one perceives objects and events, one does not merely store them as visual or auditory entities, but rather one ultimately interprets them semantically and store these interpretations. The formation of such interpretations depends on a number of conditions. Someone elses description might induce one to interpret objects or events in one way rather than another, or some other previous context might bias our interpretation. But in the absence of such prior influences, one has some very general rules for interpreting perceptions. These rules are a reflection of certain perceptual constancies and, therefore, constitute the most efficient and informative procedure for coding perceptual events. The chapter discusses four types of English constructions commonly used in describing perceptual events and explains what they imply about our perceptual codings. The first construction is the negative. The next construction is the locative—an expression that contains a spatial preposition. The next construction is the comparative, which also comes in pairs. The final construction discusses the dimensional term and its derivatives, words such as length, depth, height, width, and their kin.

Cognition and Intelligence: The Neural Bases of Intelligence: A Perspective Based on Functional Neuroimaging

We present a t heory of neural processing that is derived from the use of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). According to the neural principles described here, fluid intelligence arises from a highly adaptive, flexible neural system. The theory is composed of a set of operating principles for cortical computation. Together these principles suggest that intelligence arise from a dynamically configured set of brain areas that collaborate adaptively to meet a cognitive challenge.

Semantic control of eye movements in picture scanning during sentence-picture verification

Eye movements were monitored while people inspected a picture to determine whether it confirmed or disconfirmed a sentence they had just read. The sentences were quantified statements likeFew of the dots are red, and the picture was a display of a large and a small subset of dots. It was found that the subset of dots a person fixated was determined by the semantic representation of the sentence rather than by its superficial referent. SinceFew of the dots are red is semantically represented as a denial that the larger subset is red, people verifying the sentence fixate the larger subset, even though it is the small subset that is superficially referenced. By contrast, sinceA minority of the dots are red is semantically represented as an assertion that the smaller subset is red, people verifying this sentence fixate the smaller subset. A model of how people derive and compare representations of sentences and pictures is outlined.