scholarly journals Latent diversity in human concepts

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louis Martí ◽  
Shengyi Wu ◽  
Steven T. Piantadosi ◽  
Celeste Kidd
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Psychology ◽  
Social Discourse ◽  
Statistical Estimator ◽  
Semantic Variation ◽  
Cognitive Awareness ◽  
Semantic Concepts ◽  
Similarity Ratings

Many social and legal conflicts come down to differences in semantics. Yet, semantic variation between individuals and people’s awareness of this variation have been relatively neglected by experimental psychology. Here, across two experiments, we quantify the amount of agreement and disagreement between ordinary semantic concepts in thepopulation, as well as people’s meta-cognitive awareness of these differences. We collect similarity ratings and feature judgements, and analyze them using a non-parametricclustering scheme with an ecological statistical estimator to infer the number of different meanings for the same word that is present in the population. We find that typically atleast ten to twenty variants of meanings exist for even common nouns, but that people are unaware of this variation. Instead, people exhibit a strong bias to erroneously believe that other people share their particular semantics, pointing to one factor that likely interfereswith political and social discourse.

The semantic variation of NEED TO in four recent British English corpora

2006 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-71 ◽  
Author(s):  
Soili Nokkonen
Keyword(s):  
British English ◽  
Semantic Variation ◽  
Semantic Concepts ◽  
Corpus Data ◽  
The 1950S

This paper explores the various meanings/uses of NEED TO, a semi-modal of obligation and necessity, in two spoken and two written corpora of British English from the 1950s to the 1990s. Previous corpus-based studies indicate that its overall usage has increased, but there is clearly a gap in research on its semantics. This corpus-driven inductive investigation applies the traditional semantic concepts of root and epistemic meaning to the corpus data. The results suggest that NEED TO covers all the possible meanings/uses, both root and epistemic, of a modal of obligation and necessity. Consequently, it is a possible rival of MUST and HAVE TO in affirmative contexts. However, the traditional analysis leaves out the instances where NEED TO expresses internally motivated compulsion. This is accounted for in recent cross-linguistic studies which rearrange the non-epistemic field. Their insights are taken into consideration, and a synthesis concerning the semantic profile of NEED TO is suggested.

Beyond Intelligence Testing

2012 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 320-325 ◽  
Author(s):  
Serge Nicolas ◽  
Zachary Levine
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
Experimental Psychology ◽  
Intelligence Testing ◽  
Developmental Psychology ◽  
Mental Life ◽  
Applied Psychology ◽  
Important Research ◽  
Memory Research ◽  
English Translations ◽  
The Many

Though Alfred Binet was a prolific writer, many of his 1893–1903 works are not well known. This is partly due to a lack of English translations of the many important papers and books that he and his collaborators created during this period. Binet’s insights into intelligence testing are widely celebrated, but the centennial of his death provides an occasion to reexamine his other psychological examinations. His studies included many diverse aspects of mental life, including memory research and the science of testimony. Indeed, Binet was a pioneer of psychology and produced important research on cognitive and experimental psychology, developmental psychology, social psychology, and applied psychology. This paper seeks to elucidate these aspects of his work.

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