scholarly journals Is Earth a Perfect Square? Repetition Increases the Perceived Truth of Highly Implausible Statements

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Doris Lacassagne ◽  
Jérémy Béna ◽  
Olivier Corneille
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Recent Model ◽  
Reverse Effect ◽  
Point Scale ◽  
Single Exposure ◽  
Truth Value

A single exposure to statements is typically enough to increase their perceived truth. This Truth-by-Repetition (TBR) effect has long been assumed to occur only with statements whose truth value is unknown to participants. Contrary to this hypothesis, recent research found a TBR effect with statements known to be false. Of note, a recent model even posits that repetition could increase the perceived truth of highly implausible statements. As for now, however, no empirical evidence has reported a TBR effect for highly implausible statements. Here, we reasoned that one may be found provided a sensitive truth measure is used and statements are repeated more than just once. In a preregistered experiment, participants judged the truth of highly implausible statements on a 100-point scale, and these statements were either new to them or had been presented five times before the judgment task. We observed a TBR effect: truth judgments were higher for repeated statements than for new ones - even if all statements were still judged as false. Exploratory analyses additionally suggest that all participants were not equally prone to this TBR effect: about half the participants showed no or even a reverse effect. Overall, the results provide direct empirical evidence to the claim that repetition can increase perceived truth even for highly implausible statements, although not equally so for all participants and not to the point of making the statements look true.

scholarly journals Difficulties in Comprehending Affirmative and Negative Sentences: Evidence From Chinese Children With Reading Difficulties

2017 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-193 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shenai Hu ◽  
Maria Vender ◽  
Gaetano Fiorin ◽  
Denis Delfitto
Keyword(s):  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Reading Difficulties ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Experimental Results ◽  
Chinese Children ◽  
Behavioral Data ◽  
Poor Readers ◽  
Value Judgment ◽  
General Validity ◽  
Truth Value

Recent experimental results suggest that negation is particularly challenging for children with reading difficulties. This study looks at how young poor readers, speakers of Mandarin Chinese, comprehend affirmative and negative sentences as compared with a group of age-matched typical readers. Forty-four Chinese children were tested with a truth value judgment task. The results reveal that negative sentences were harder to process than affirmative ones, irrespective of the distinction between poor and typical readers. Moreover, poor readers performed worse than typical readers in comprehending sentences, regardless of whether they were affirmative or negative sentences. We interpret the results as (a) confirming the two-step simulation hypothesis, based on the result that the difficulty in processing negation has a general validity (persisting in pragmatically felicitous contexts), and (b) disconfirming that negation, as far as behavioral data are concerned, can be used as a reliable linguistic predictor of reading difficulties.

Linguistic cues facilitate children’s understanding of belief-reporting sentences

2021 ◽  
pp. 014272372110486
Author(s):  
Xiaowen Zhang ◽  
Peng Zhou
Keyword(s):  
Gold Medal ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Value Judgment ◽  
Additional Information ◽  
Linguistic Cues ◽  
Truth Value ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Underlying Mechanisms ◽  
Mental Verbs

It has been well-documented that although children around 4 years start to attribute false beliefs to others in classic false-belief tasks, they are still less able to evaluate the truth-value of propositional belief-reporting sentences, especially when belief conflicts with reality. This article investigates whether linguistic cues, verb factivity in particular, can facilitate children’s understanding of belief-reporting sentences. Two experiments were implemented, one testing children’s knowledge of verb factivity using a gold medal task, and one investigating children’s interpretation of belief-reporting sentences using a truth-value-judgment task. Both experiments took advantage of the contrast between neutral non-factive mental verbs and strong negatively biased mental verbs. What sets the two apart is that the complement clause following a strong negatively biased mental verb is definitely false, whereas the one following a neutral non-factive mental verb remains indeterminate in the absence of additional information. The findings were that, first, 4-year-old children were able to tell the difference between the two types of mental verbs in factivity, and second, children’s performance was significantly improved when a strong negatively biased mental verb than when a neutral non-factive mental verb was used as the main verb of the belief-reporting sentences. The findings suggest that the use of strong negatively biased mental verbs facilitates children’s understanding of belief-reporting sentences. Implications of the findings are discussed in relation to the underlying mechanisms connecting verb factivity and false-belief understanding.

scholarly journals When “one” can be “two”: Cross-linguistic differences affect children’s interpretation of the numeral one

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 301-313
Author(s):  
Sarah Dolscheid ◽  
Franziska Schleussinger ◽  
Martina Penke
Keyword(s):  
Judgment Task ◽  
Value Judgment ◽  
Linguistic Differences ◽  
Linguistic Difference ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Truth Value ◽  
Do So ◽  
The Way

In English, a lexical distinction is drawn between the indefinite determiner “a” and the numeral “one”. English-speaking children also interpret the two terms differently, with an exact, upper bounded interpretation of the numeral “one”, but no upper bounded interpretation of the indefinite determiner “a”. Unlike English, however, German does not draw a distinction between the indefinite determiner and the numeral one but instead uses the same term “ein/e” to express both functions. To find out whether this cross-linguistic difference affects children’s upper bounded interpretation of “ein/e”, we tested German-speaking children and adults in a truth-value-judgment task and compared their performance to English-speaking children. Our results revealed that German-speaking children differed from both English children and German adults. Whereas the majority of German adults interpreted “ein/e” in an upper bounded way (i.e. as exactly one, not two), the majority of German-speaking children favored a non-upper bounded interpretation (thus accepting two as a valid response to “ein/e”). German-speaking children’s proportion of upper bounded responses to “ein/e” was also significantly lower than English children’s upper bounded responses to “one”. However, German children’s rate of upper bounded responses increased once a number-biasing context was provided. These findings suggest that German-speaking children can interpret “ein/e” in an upper bounded way but that they need additional cues in order to do so. When no such cues are present, German-speaking children differ from both German-speaking adults and from their English-speaking peers, demonstrating that cross-linguistic differences can affect the way speakers interpret numbers.

scholarly journals Plurality inferences are scalar implicatures: Evidence from acquisition

2015 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lyn Tieu ◽  
Cory Bill ◽  
Jacopo Romoli ◽  
Stephen Crain
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Title Page ◽  
Scalar Implicature ◽  
Scalar Implicatures ◽  
Value Judgment ◽  
Downward Entailing ◽  
Truth Value

<div class="page" title="Page 1"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span>This paper provides novel experimental evidence for a scalar implicature approach to the plurality inferences that are associated with English plural morphology (</span><span>Emily fed giraffes </span><span>-&gt; </span><span>Emily fed more than one giraffe</span><span>). Using a Truth Value Judgment Task, we show that both adults and 4–5-year-old children compute more plurality inferences in upward-entailing than downward-entailing environments, but children compute fewer plurality inferences overall than adults do. These findings are consistent with previous research demonstrating children’s relative insensitivity to scalar implicatures. We discuss the implications of these findings for theories of plurality inferences, and for the acquisition of scalar inferences more generally. </span></p></div></div></div>

Beyond intersubjective validity: recent empirical investigations into the nature of aesthetic judgment

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Florian Cova
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Aesthetic Judgment ◽  
Philosophy Of Art ◽  
Truth Value ◽  
Empirical Investigations ◽  
Aesthetic Judgments

According to a longstanding tradition in philosophy of art, people spontaneously attribute universal, intersubjective validity to their aesthetic judgments. In this chapter, I discuss recent empirical evidence against this claim. I then present the results of two new studies that extend these findings by showing that, far from being intersubjectively valid, the truth-value of aesthetic judgment can also vary in function of (i) the etiology of these judgments, and (ii) the person they are directed to.

The adjective in Dutch-French codeswitching: Word order and agreement

2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 454-473 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Vanden Wyngaerd
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Minimalist Program ◽  
Point Scale ◽  
Grammaticality Judgment ◽  
Grammaticality Judgments ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Minimalist Approach ◽  
The Matrix ◽  
Points Of View

Aims and Objectives: This paper investigates the word order and adjectival agreement patterns in French-Dutch codeswitched Determiner Phrases (DPs). It examines the predictions made by two theoretical points of view: the approach by MacSwan (2009) within the Minimalist Program (MP) and the Matrix Language Framework (MLF) (Myers-Scotton & Jake, 2009). Methodology: The predictions of these frameworks are compared to data gathered in a grammaticality judgment task. In total, 120 codeswitched sentences were presented aurally to participants, who were asked to rate the sentences on a three-point scale. Originality: While some previous work on word order within codeswitched DP’s exists, this paper is the first study investigating the adjectival agreement patterns in codeswitching. Data and Analysis: Statistical analysis of the data showed that the MacSwan approach is a better predictor for the grammaticality judgments, as sentences predicted to be grammatical by the MP were rated higher than sentences predicted to be ungrammatical by the same model. This difference was statistically significant. There was no significant difference in rating for the predictions of the MLF. Conclusions: The results of the judgment task in combination with the results of previous research on codeswitching highlight the importance of a combination of data from both naturalistic and experimental settings. Implications: The predictions of the Minimalist approach have the upper hand over the predictions of the MLF. However, it remains is important to integrate results from other experimental methodologies, such as naturalistic data and results from psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic studies.

Coherent discourse solves the pronoun interpretation problem

2008 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
JENNIFER SPENADER ◽  
ERIK-JAN SMITS ◽  
PETRA HENDRIKS
Keyword(s):  
Target Sentence ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Production Task ◽  
Value Judgment ◽  
Truth Value ◽  
Age Range ◽  
Dutch Children ◽  
Interpretation Problem ◽  
Object Pronouns

ABSTRACTMany comprehension studies have shown that children as late as age 6 ; 6 misinterpret object pronouns as co-referring with the referential subject about half the time. A recent review of earlier experiments testing children's interpretation of object pronouns in sentences with quantified subjects (Elbourne, 2005) also suggests that there is a ‘Pronoun Interpretation Problem’. In contrast, two experiments addressing English children's pronoun production (Bloom, Barss, Nicol & Conway, 1994; de Villiers, Cahillane & Altreuter, 2006) show almost perfect usage. The aim of this study is to verify this asymmetry between pronoun production and pronoun comprehension for Dutch, and to investigate the effects of coherent discourse and topicality on pronoun production and comprehension. Employing a truth-value judgment task and an elicited production task, this study indeed finds such an asymmetry in 83 Dutch children (age range 4 ; 5–6 ; 6). When object pronouns were clearly established as the topic of the target sentence, the Pronoun Interpretation Problem dissolved entirely. These results are compatible with the asymmetrical grammar hypothesis of Hendriks & Spenader (2005/2006) and suggest, contrary to many previous claims, that children are highly proficient at using pragmatic clues in interpretation.

Children's interpretation of disjunction in the scope of ‘before’: a comparison of English and Mandarin

2011 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 482-522 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANNA NOTLEY ◽  
PENG ZHOU ◽  
BRITTA JENSEN ◽  
STEPHEN CRAIN
Keyword(s):  
Classical Logic ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Finish Line ◽  
Value Judgment ◽  
Truth Value

ABSTRACTThis study investigates three- to five-year-old children's interpretation of disjunction in sentences like ‘The dog reached the finish line before the turtle or the bunny’. English disjunction has a conjunctive interpretation in such sentences (‘The dog reached the finish line before the turtle and before the bunny’). This interpretation conforms with classical logic. Mandarin disjunction (‘huozhe’) can take scope over ‘before’ (‘zai … zhiqian’), so the same sentence can mean ‘The dog reached the finish line before the turtle or before the bunny (I don't know which)’. If children are guided by adult input in the acquisition of sentence meanings, English- and Mandarin-speaking children should assign different interpretations to such sentences. If children are guided by logical principles, then children acquiring either language should initially assign the conjunctive interpretation of disjunction. A truth-value judgment task was used to test this prediction and English- and Mandarin-speaking children were found to behave similarly.

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