scholarly journals A within-subjects comparison of the acquisition of quantity-related inferences

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 558
Author(s):  
Alicia Parrish ◽  
Ailís Cournane
Keyword(s):  
Judgment Task ◽  
Individual Response ◽  
Scalar Implicature ◽  
Response Patterns ◽  
Rating Task ◽  
Scalar Implicatures ◽  
Individual Subject ◽  
Value Judgment ◽  
Within Subjects ◽  
The Individual

This study directly compares quantity inferences from scalar implicatures (‘Some of the ducks are black’) and uniqueness presuppositions in definites (‘the duck is black’) to exhaustivity inferences in English it-clefts (‘It’s the duck that’s black’) for which the theoretical literature disagrees on the source of inference – pragmatic (like scalar implicatures), or semantic (like presuppositions). We investigate whether within-subjects correlations in acquisition can inform us about the source of exhaustivity inferences. Assuming comprehension is achieved once the necessary basis for meaning is acquired, it-clefts should pattern with presupposition judgments if computing a presupposition is involved and should pattern with scalar implicature judgments if computing an implicature is involved. We conduct three experiments to test how closely it-cleft judgments pattern with other quantityrelated inferences, keeping materials maximally similar. The first two experiments test adult participants using a Truth Value Judgment Task and then a 3-point Rating Task; we find that adults’ response patterns to under-informative uses of these constructions differ both across individuals and across inference types, with the Rating Task giving more informative results. In the third experiment, we use the 3-point Rating Task with 4-, 5-, and 6- year olds to characterize response patterns across the three inference types for each individual subject. We find that the individual response patterns children exhibit are consistent with the theory that it-cleft exhaustivity shares an underlying cognitive source with the computation of presupposition inferences, but not with scalar implicature inferences.

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>

scholarly journals Aerobic Fitness of Starter and Non-Starter Soccer Players in the Champion’s League

2018 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-108
Author(s):  
Giorgos Paraskevas ◽  
Marios Hadjicharalambous
Keyword(s):  
Oxygen Uptake ◽  
Aerobic Fitness ◽  
Maximal Oxygen Uptake ◽  
Soccer Players ◽  
Individual Response ◽  
Response Patterns ◽  
Biological Variability ◽  
Professional Soccer ◽  
Physiological Evaluation ◽  
The Individual

Abstract To identify individual response patterns in selected aerobic fitness variables of regular starters (ST; N = 7) and non-starters (Non-ST; N = 10), top level professional soccer players were tested for maximal oxygen uptake (VO2max), velocity at 4 mM of lactate (V4), velocity at maximal oxygen uptake (νVO2max) and oxygen pulse (O2-pulse) in July and December following consecutive periods of fixture congestion. V4 was the only variable that increased significantly in December compared to July (15.1 ± 0.5 vs. 14.6 ± 0.5, p = 0.001). There was an almost certain beneficial large mean team change for V4 (ES = 1.2 (0.67; 1.57), 100/0/0), while beneficial mean team changes were less likely for νVO2max and O2-pulse [ES = 0.31 (-0.08; 0.70), 68/30/2 and ES = 0.24 (0.01; 0.49), 64/36/0, respectively] and unclear for VO2max (ES = 0.02 (-0.31; 0.70), 18/69/13). With the exception of V4 where 10 out of 17 players (7 ST and 3 Non-ST) showed positive changes higher than the biological variability, all other variables were characterized by a substantial proportion of changes lower than the biological variability. The present study demonstrated that aerobic fitness variables that require maximal effort may be characterized by greater variability of the individual response pattern compared to that of submaximal aerobic fitness variables irrespective of the accumulated game time. Submaximal aerobic fitness variables appear to be more informative in the physiological evaluation of top level soccer players and this may be an advantage during exposure to periods of consecutive games.

Scalar and ad-hoc pragmatic inferences in children: guess which one is easier

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Francesca FOPPOLO ◽  
Greta MAZZAGGIO ◽  
Francesca PANZERI ◽  
Luca SURIAN
Keyword(s):  
Mental State ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Selection Task ◽  
Scalar Implicatures ◽  
Value Judgment ◽  
Truth Value

Abstract Several studies investigated preschoolers’ ability to compute scalar and ad-hoc implicatures, but only one compared children's performance with both kinds of implicature with the same task, a picture selection task. In Experiment 1 (N = 58, age: 4;2-6;0), we first show that the truth value judgment task, traditionally employed to investigate children's pragmatic ability, prompts a rate of pragmatic responses comparable to the picture selection task. In Experiment 2 (N = 141, age: 3;8-9;2) we used the picture selection task to compare scalar and ad-hoc implicatures and linked the ability to derive these implicatures to some cognitive and linguistic measures. We found that four- and five-year-olds children performed better on ad-hoc than on scalar implicatures. Furthermore, we found that morphosyntactic competence was associated with success in both kinds of implicatures, while performance on mental state reasoning was positively associated with success on scalar but not ad-hoc implicatures.

scholarly journals Efficient high-resolution TMS mapping of the human motor cortex by nonlinear regression

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ole Numssen ◽  
Anna-Leah Zier ◽  
Axel Thielscher ◽  
Gesa Hartwigsen ◽  
Thomas R. Knösche ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Electric Field ◽  
Electric Fields ◽  
Motor Evoked Potentials ◽  
Random Coil ◽  
Individual Response ◽  
Precentral Gyrus ◽  
Individual Subject ◽  
Human Motor Cortex ◽  
Preoperative Mapping ◽  
The Individual

AbstractBackgroundThe precise cortical origins of the electrophysiological and behavioral effects of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) remain largely unclear. Addressing this question is further impeded by substantial inter-individual response variability to TMS.ObjectiveWe present a novel method to reliably and user-independently determine the effectively stimulated cortical site at the individual subject level. This generic approach combines physiological measurements with electric field simulations and leverages information from random coil positions, electric field estimations, and electromyography.MethodsWe applied ~1000 single biphasic TMS pulses with standard TMS hardware to 13 subjects with random coil positions & orientations over the primary motor hand area. Motor evoked potentials (MEPs) of three finger muscles were recorded concurrently. We calculated the corresponding electric fields for all TMS pulses and regressed them against the elicited MEPs in each cortical element. This yields a cortical map of congruency between induced field strength and generated response.ResultsWe observed high congruence between the electric fields and the elicited MEPs in hotspots located primarily on the crowns and rims of the precentral gyrus. The three cortical digit representations could be distinguished at the individual subject level with a high spatial resolution. A post-hoc convergence analysis revealed a possible lower bound of only 180 pulses to obtain qualitatively identical results.ConclusionsLeveraging information from many different TMS pulses significantly reduces the number of necessary stimulations and mapping time. The protocol is easy to implement due to the realization of arbitrary coil positions & orientations and is suitable for practical and clinical use such as preoperative mapping.

Mitral Cell Temporal Response Patterns Evoked by Odor Mixtures in the Rat Olfactory Bulb

2002 ◽  
Vol 88 (2) ◽  
pp. 829-838 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pascale Giraudet ◽  
Frédéric Berthommier ◽  
Michel Chaput
Keyword(s):  
Olfactory Bulb ◽  
Binary Mixtures ◽  
Temporal Distribution ◽  
Mitral Cell ◽  
Individual Response ◽  
Mitral Cells ◽  
Response Patterns ◽  
Odor Mixtures ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Molecular Components

Mammals generally have the ability to extract odor information contained in complex mixtures of molecular components. However, odor mixture processing has been studied electrophysiologically only in insects, crustaceans, and fish. As a first step toward a better understanding of this processing in high vertebrates, we studied the representation of odor mixtures in the rat olfactory bulb, i.e., the second-order level of the olfactory pathways. We compared the single-unit responses of mitral cells, the main cells of the olfactory bulb, to pure odors and to their binary mixtures. Eighty-six mitral cells were recorded in anesthetized freely breathing rats stimulated with five odorants and their 10 binary mixtures. The spontaneous activity and the odor-evoked responses were characterized by their temporal distribution of activity along the respiratory cycle, i.e., by cycle-triggered histograms. Ninety percent of the mixtures were found to evoke a response when at least one of their two components evoked a response. Mixture-evoked patterns were analyzed to describe the modalities of the combination of patterns evoked by the two components. In most of the cases, the mixture pattern was closely similar to one of the component patterns. This dominance of a component over the other one was related to the responsiveness of the cell to the individual components of the mixture, to the molecular nature of the stimulus, and to the coarse shape of individual response patterns. This suggests that the components of binary mixtures may be encoded simultaneously by different odor-specific temporal distributions of activity.

The Additive Impact of Group and Individual Publicly Displayed Feedback: Examining Individual Response Patterns and Response Generalization in a Safe-Driving Occupational Intervention

2010 ◽  
Vol 34 (5) ◽  
pp. 338-366 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy D. Ludwig ◽  
E. Scott Geller ◽  
Steven W. Clarke
Keyword(s):  
Individual Response ◽  
Response Patterns ◽  
Safe Driving ◽  
Baseline Design ◽  
Turn Signal ◽  
Group Feedback ◽  
Individual Feedback ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Signal Use ◽  
Feedback Phase

Additive effects of publicly posting individual feedback following group goal-setting and feedback were evaluated. The turn-signal use of pizza deliverers was studied in a multiple baseline design across two pizza stores. After baseline observations, pizza deliverers voted on a group turn-signal goal and then received 4 weeks of group feedback on their turn-signal use (i.e., group feedback phase). Then, for the next 4 weeks, individual turn-signal use means were publicly posted along with the group feedback (i.e., individual feedback phase). Deliverers at Store A ( n = 24) increased their use of turn signals from a mean of 5% during baseline to 16.9% during the group feedback phase and then to 30% during the individual feedback phase. Turn-signal use at Store B (n = 20) increased from 28.9% during baseline to 43.6% during group feedback phase and to 56% during the subsequent individual feedback phase. Individual analyses suggested that deliverers who improved the target behavior during group feedback phase did not increase their turn-signal use further when individual feedback was added. Conversely, most deliverers who did not improve during the group feedback phase increased their turn-signal use when individual feedback was added. Complete intersection stopping increased concurrently with the turn-signal intervention phases from baseline means of 12% and 30% at Store A and B, respectively, to means of 21% and 48% during the interventions.

scholarly journals When pragmatics matters more for truth-value judgments: An investigation of quantifier scope ambiguity

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory Scontras ◽  
Lisa S. Pearl
Keyword(s):  
Ambiguity Resolution ◽  
Cognitive Modeling ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Linguistic Meaning ◽  
Value Judgments ◽  
Modeling Framework ◽  
Value Judgment ◽  
Computational Cognitive Modeling ◽  
Truth Value ◽  
The Individual

Investigations of linguistic meaning rely crucially on truth-value judgments, which assess whether a sentence can truthfully describe a given scenario. In investigations of language acquisition, truth-value judgments are used to assess both the target knowledge adults have and the developing knowledge children have at different ages. On the basis of truth-value judgments, researchers have concluded that differences between how children resolve ambiguous utterances and how adults do so persist until at least age five. Current explanations compatible with the experimental data attribute these differences to both grammatical processing and pragmatic factors. Here, we use computational cognitive modeling to formally articulate the ambiguity-resolution process that underlies child and adult judgments in a truth-value judgment task; crucially, the model can separate out the individual contributions of specific grammatical processing and pragmatic factors to the resulting judgment behavior. We find that pragmatic factors play a larger role than grammatical processing factors in explaining children’s non-adult-like ambiguity resolution behavior, and the computational modeling framework allows us to understand exactly why that is. Interestingly, the model predicts qualitative similarity between child and adult ambiguity resolution. Given this prediction, we then extend our model to show how the same processes are active in adult ambiguity resolution. This result supports continuity in the development of ambiguity resolution, where children do not qualitatively change how they resolve ambiguity in order to become adult-like. We discuss the implications of our results for acquisition more generally, including both theories of development and methods for assessing that development.

scholarly journals Portioning-Out and Individuation in Mandarin Non-interrogative wh-Pronominal Phrases: Experimental Evidence From Child Mandarin

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aijun Huang ◽  
Francesco-Alessio Ursini ◽  
Luisa Meroni
Keyword(s):  
Language Development ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Value Judgment ◽  
Adults And Children ◽  
Individual Classifier ◽  
The Individual ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
Semantic Properties ◽  
Child Mandarin

Portioning-out and individuation are two important semantic properties for the characterization of countability. In Mandarin, nouns are not marked with count-mass syntax, and it is controversial whether individuation is encoded in classifiers or in nouns. In the present study, we investigates the interpretation of a minimal pair of non-interrogative wh-pronominal phrases, including duo-shao-N and duo-shao-ge-N. Due to the presence/absence of the individual classifier ge, these two wh-pronominal phrases differ in how they encode portioning-out and individuation. In two experiments, we used a Truth Value Judgment Task to examine the interpretation of these two wh-pronominal phrases by Mandarin-speaking adults and 4-to-6-year-old children. We found that both adults and children are sensitive to their interpretative differences with respect to the portioning-out and individuation properties. They assign either count or mass readings to the bare wh-pronominal phrase duo-shao-N depending on specific contexts, but only count readings to the classifier-bearing wh-pronominal phrase duo-shao-ge-N. Moreover, the portioning-out and individuation properties associated with the individual classifier ge emerge independently in the course of language development, with the portioning-out property taking precedence over the individuation property. Taken together, the present study provides new evidence for the view that the portioning-out and individuation properties in Mandarin are encoded in classifiers rather than in nouns, and these two semantic properties are two distinct components in our grammar.

Differentiating scalar implicature from exclusion inferences in language acquisition

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jess Sullivan ◽  
Kathryn Davidson ◽  
Shirlene Wade ◽  
David Barner
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Scalar Implicature ◽  
Scalar Implicatures ◽  
Mutual Exclusivity ◽  
Logical Semantics

When acquiring language, children must not only learn the meanings of words, but also how to interpret them in context. For example, children must learn both the logical semantics of the scalar quantifier some and its pragmatically enriched meaning: ‘some but not all’. Some studies have shown that this “scalar implicature” that some implies ‘some but not all’ poses a challenge even to nine-year-olds, while others find success by age three. We asked whether reports of children’s early successes might be due to the computation of exclusion inferences (like contrast or mutual exclusivity) rather than an ability to compute scalar implicatures. We found that young children (N=214; ages 4;0-7;11) sometimes prefer to compute symmetrical exclusion inferences rather than asymmetric scalar inferences when interpreting quantifiers. This suggests that some apparent successes in computing scalar implicature can actually be explained by less sophisticated exclusion inferences.

Stasis Anxiety

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew van der Vlies
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Black Writers ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Individual Subject ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Past Experiences ◽  
Contemporary Writing

Two recent debut novels, Songeziwe Mahlangu’s Penumbra (2013) and Masande Ntshanga’s The Reactive (2014), reflect the experience of impasse, stasis, and arrested development experienced by many in South Africa. This chapter uses these novels as the starting point for a discussion of writing by young black writers in general, and as representative examples of the treatment of ‘waithood’ in contemporary writing. It considers (spatial and temporal) theorisations of anxiety, discerns recursive investments in past experiences of hope (invoking Jennifer Wenzel’s work to consider the afterlives of anti-colonial prophecy), assesses the usefulness of Giorgio Agamben’s elaboration of the ancient Greek understanding of stasis as civil war, and asks how these works’ elaboration of stasis might be understood in relation to Wendy Brown’s discussion of the eclipsing of the individual subject of political rights by the neoliberal subject whose very life is framed by its potential to be understood as capital.

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