Not only base rates are neglected in the Engineer-Lawyer problem: An investigation of reasoners' underutilization of complementarity

The standard Engineer-Lawyer problem (Kahneman & Tversky, 1973) points to reasoners' failure to integrate mentioned base rate information as they arrive at likelihood estimates. Research in this area nevertheless presupposes that reasoners respect complementarity (i.e., participants ensure that competing estimates add up to 100%). A survey of the literature lends doubt to this presupposition. We propose that participants' non-normative performance on the standard problem reflects a reluctance to view the task probabilistically and that normative responses become more prominent as probabilistic aspects of the task do. Three Experiments manipulated two kinds of probabilistic cues and determined the extent to which a) base rates were integrated and b) the complementarity constraint was respected. Experiment 1 presented six versions of an Engineer-Lawyer-type problem (that varied 3 Levels of cue-to-complementarity and 2 base rates). Results showed that base-rate integration increased as cues-to-complementarity did. Experiment 2 confirmed that Gigerenzer, Hell & Blank's (1988) random draw paradigm facilitates base rate integration; a second measure revealed that it also prompts respect for complementarity. Experiment 3 replicated two of our main findings in one procedure while controlling for the potential influence of extraneous task features. Approaches that describe how probabilistic cues might prompt normative responding are discussed

The positive side of a negative reference: the delay between linguistic processing and common ground

Interlocutors converge on names to refer to entities. For example, a speaker might refer to a novel looking object as the jellyfish and, once identified, the listener will too. The hypothesized mechanism behind such referential precedents is a subject of debate. The common ground view claims that listeners register the object as well as the identity of the speaker who coined the label. The linguistic view claims that, once established, precedents are treated by listeners like any other linguistic unit, i.e. without needing to keep track of the speaker. To test predictions from each account, we used visual-world eyetracking, which allows observations in real time, during a standard referential communication task. Participants had to select objects based on instructions from two speakers. In the critical condition, listeners sought an object with a negative reference such as not the jellyfish. We aimed to determine the extent to which listeners rely on the linguistic input, common ground or both. We found that initial interpretations were based on linguistic processing only and that common ground considerations do emerge but only after 1000 ms. Our findings support the idea that-at least temporally-linguistic processing can be isolated from common ground

Overcoming perceptual features in logical reasoning: an event-related potentials study

It is more difficult for reasoners to detect that the letter-number pair H7 verifies the conditional rule If there is not a T then there is not a 4 than to detect that it verifies the rule If there is an H then there is a 7. In prior work [Prado, J., & Noveck, I. A. (2007). Overcoming perceptual features in logical reasoning: a parametric functional magnetic resonance imaging study. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 19(4), 642-657], we argued that this difficulty was due to mismatching effects, i.e. perceptual mismatches that arise when the items mentioned in the rule (e.g. T and 4) mismatch those presented in the test-pair (H and 7). The present study aimed to test this claim directly by recording ERPs while participants evaluated conditional rules in the presence or absence of mismatches. We found that mismatches, not only trigger a frontocentral N2 (an ERP known to be related to perceptual mismatch) but that they, parametrically modulate its amplitude (e.g. two mismatches prompt a greater N2 than one). Our results indicate that the main role of negations in conditional rules is to focus attention on the negated constituent but also suggest that there is some inter-individual differences in the way participants apprehend such negations, as indicated by a correlation between N2 amplitude and participants' reaction times. Overall, these findings emphasize how overcoming perceptual features plays a role in the mismatching effect and extend the mismatch-related effects of the N2 into a reasoning task

The principles of communicative language use

The paper aims to overview some typical principles of communicative language use in a cognitive pragmatic approach applying a reductionist method in order to demonstrate that the well-known principles can be reduced to a very general rationality (economy) principle. After briefly reviewing the principles the paper re-evaluates them and provides a new classification of them relying on the definition of ostensive-inferential communication. The principles which can be divided into rationality and interpersonality principles are really principles of effective information transmission on objects and selves. They refer to two kinds of language use: informative and communicative ones. The only principles valid for only communicative language use are the communicative principle of relevance and the principle of communicative intention suggested in the present article. Finally, the paper reduces all rationality and interpersonality principles to a very general rationality principle, i.e., the cognitive principle of relevance

Cross-linguistic patterns in the acquisition of quantifiers.

Learners of most languages are faced with the task of acquiring words to talk about number and quantity. Much is known about the order of acquisition of number words as well as the cognitive and perceptual systems and cultural practices that shape it. Substantially less is known about the acquisition of quantifiers. Here, we consider the extent to which systems and practices that support number word acquisition can be applied to quantifier acquisition and conclude that the two domains are largely distinct in this respect. Consequently, we hypothesize that the acquisition of quantifiers is constrained by a set of factors related to each quantifier's specific meaning. We investigate competence with the expressions for "all," "none," "some," "some…not," and "most" in 31 languages, representing 11 language types, by testing 768 5-y-old children and 536 adults. We found a cross-linguistically similar order of acquisition of quantifiers, explicable in terms of four factors relating to their meaning and use. In addition, exploratory analyses reveal that language- and learner-specific factors, such as negative concord and gender, are significant predictors of variation.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from the National Academy of Sciences via http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.160134111