Observers Efficiently Extract the Minimal and Maximal Element in Perceptual Magnitude Sets: Evidence for a Bipartite Format.

The mind represents abstract magnitude information, including time, space, and number, but in what format is this information stored? We show support for the bipartite format of perceptual magnitudes, in which the measured value on a dimension is scaled to the dynamic range of the input, leading to a privileged status for values at the lowest and highest end of the range. In six experiments with college undergraduates, we show that observers are faster and more accurate to find the endpoints (i.e., the minimum and maximum) than any of the inner values, even as the number of items increases beyond visual short-term memory limits. Our results show that length, size, and number are represented in a dynamic format that allows for comparison-free sorting, with endpoints represented with an immediately accessible status, consistent with the bipartite model of perceptual magnitudes. We discuss the implications for theories of visual search and ensemble perception.

Keeping quantifier meaning in mind: Connecting semantics, cognition, and pragmatics.

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.

Linguistic meanings as cognitive instructions.

Natural languages like English connect pronunciations with meanings. Linguistic pronunciations can be described in ways that relate them to our motor system (e.g., to the movement of our lips and tongue). But how do linguistic meanings relate to our nonlinguistic cognitive systems? As a case study, we defend an explicit proposal about the meaning of most by comparing it to the closely related more: whereas more expresses a comparison between two independent subsets, most expresses a subset-superset comparison. Six experiments with adults and children demonstrate that these subtle differences between their meanings influence how participants organize and interrogate their visual world. In otherwise identical situations, changing the word from most to more affects preferences for picture-sentence matching (experiments 1-2), scene creation (experiments 3-4), memory for visual features (experiment 5), and accuracy on speeded truth judgments (experiment 6). These effects support the idea that the meanings of more and most are mental representations that provide detailed instructions to conceptual systems.