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Szymanik J, Kochari A, Bremnes HS. Questions About Quantifiers: Symbolic and Nonsymbolic Quantity Processing by the Brain. Cogn Sci 2023; 47:e13346. [PMID: 37867321 DOI: 10.1111/cogs.13346] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/08/2020] [Revised: 05/11/2023] [Accepted: 09/06/2023] [Indexed: 10/24/2023]
Abstract
One approach to understanding how the human cognitive system stores and operates with quantifiers such as "some," "many," and "all" is to investigate their interaction with the cognitive mechanisms for estimating and comparing quantities from perceptual input (i.e., nonsymbolic quantities). While a potential link between quantifier processing and nonsymbolic quantity processing has been considered in the past, it has never been discussed extensively. Simultaneously, there is a long line of research within the field of numerical cognition on the relationship between processing exact number symbols (such as "3" or "three") and nonsymbolic quantity. This accumulated knowledge can potentially be harvested for research on quantifiers since quantifiers and number symbols are two different ways of referring to quantity information symbolically. The goal of the present review is to survey the research on the relationship between quantifiers and nonsymbolic quantity processing mechanisms and provide a set of research directions and specific questions for the investigation of quantifier processing.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jakub Szymanik
- Center for Brain/Mind Sciences and the Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science, University of Trento
| | - Arnold Kochari
- Institute for Logic, Language, and Computation, University of Amsterdam
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Cipora K, Gashaj V, Gridley AS, Soltanlou M, Nuerk HC. Cultural similarities and specificities of finger counting and montring: Evidence from Amazon Tsimane' people. Acta Psychol (Amst) 2023; 239:104009. [PMID: 37586227 DOI: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2023.104009] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/30/2021] [Revised: 07/20/2023] [Accepted: 08/08/2023] [Indexed: 08/18/2023] Open
Abstract
Numerical cognition might be embodied, that is, grounded in bodily actions. This claim is supported by the observation that, potentially due to our shared biology, finger counting is prevalent among a variety of cultures. Differences in finger counting are apparent even within Western cultures. Relatively few indigenous cultures have been systematically analyzed in terms of traditional finger counting and montring (i.e., communicating numbers with fingers) routines. Even fewer studies used the same protocols across cultures, allowing for a systematic comparison of indigenous and Western finger counting routines. We analyze the finger counting and montring routines of Tsimane' (N = 121), an indigenous people living in the Bolivian Amazon rainforest, depending on handedness, education level, and exposure to mainstream, industrialized Bolivian culture. Tsimane' routines are compared with those of German and British participants. Tsimane' reveal a greater variation in finger counting and montring routines, which seems to be modified by their education level. We outline a framework on how different factors such as handedness and reading direction might affect cross-cultural and within-cultural variation in finger counting.
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Affiliation(s)
- Krzysztof Cipora
- Centre for Mathematical Cognition, Loughborough University, UK; Department of Psychology, University of Tuebingen, Tuebingen, Germany; LEAD Graduate School & Research Network, University of Tuebingen, Tuebingen, Germany.
| | - Venera Gashaj
- Centre for Mathematical Cognition, Loughborough University, UK; Department of Psychology, University of Tuebingen, Tuebingen, Germany
| | | | - Mojtaba Soltanlou
- Department of Psychology, University of Tuebingen, Tuebingen, Germany; School of Psychology, University of Surrey, Guildford, UK; Department of Childhood Education, Faculty of Education, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa
| | - Hans-Christoph Nuerk
- Department of Psychology, University of Tuebingen, Tuebingen, Germany; LEAD Graduate School & Research Network, University of Tuebingen, Tuebingen, Germany
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Ciccione L, Sablé-Meyer M, Boissin E, Josserand M, Potier-Watkins C, Caparos S, Dehaene S. Trend judgment as a perceptual building block of graphicacy and mathematics, across age, education, and culture. Sci Rep 2023; 13:10266. [PMID: 37355745 PMCID: PMC10290641 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-37172-3] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/09/2023] [Accepted: 06/17/2023] [Indexed: 06/26/2023] Open
Abstract
Data plots are widely used in science, journalism and politics, since they efficiently allow to depict a large amount of information. Graphicacy, the ability to understand graphs, has thus become a fundamental cultural skill comparable to literacy or numeracy. Here, we introduce a measure of intuitive graphicacy that assesses the perceptual ability to detect a trend in noisy scatterplots ("does this graph go up or down?"). In 3943 educated participants, responses vary as a sigmoid function of the t-value that a statistician would compute to detect a significant trend. We find a minimum level of core intuitive graphicacy even in unschooled participants living in remote Namibian villages (N = 87) and 6-year-old 1st-graders who never read a graph (N = 27). The sigmoid slope that we propose as a proxy of intuitive graphicacy increases with education and tightly correlates with statistical and mathematical knowledge, showing that experience contributes to refining graphical intuitions. Our tool, publicly available online, allows to quickly evaluate and formally quantify a perceptual building block of graphicacy.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lorenzo Ciccione
- Cognitive Neuroimaging Unit, CEA, INSERM, NeuroSpin Center, Université Paris-Saclay, 91191, Gif-sur-Yvette, France.
- Collège de France, Université Paris Sciences Lettres (PSL), 75005, Paris, France.
| | - Mathias Sablé-Meyer
- Cognitive Neuroimaging Unit, CEA, INSERM, NeuroSpin Center, Université Paris-Saclay, 91191, Gif-sur-Yvette, France
- Collège de France, Université Paris Sciences Lettres (PSL), 75005, Paris, France
| | - Esther Boissin
- LaPsyDÉ, CNRS, Université Paris Cité, 75005, Paris, France
| | - Mathilde Josserand
- Laboratoire Dynamique Du Langage, UMR 5596, Université Lumière Lyon 2, 69363, Lyon, France
| | | | - Serge Caparos
- DysCo Lab, Department of Psychology, Université Paris 8, 93526, Saint-Denis, France
- Human Sciences Section, Institut Universitaire de France, 75005, Paris, France
| | - Stanislas Dehaene
- Cognitive Neuroimaging Unit, CEA, INSERM, NeuroSpin Center, Université Paris-Saclay, 91191, Gif-sur-Yvette, France
- Collège de France, Université Paris Sciences Lettres (PSL), 75005, Paris, France
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Royka A, Chen A, Aboody R, Huanca T, Jara-Ettinger J. People infer communicative action through an expectation for efficient communication. Nat Commun 2022; 13:4160. [PMID: 35851397 PMCID: PMC9293910 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-31716-3] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/28/2021] [Accepted: 06/30/2022] [Indexed: 11/09/2022] Open
Abstract
Humans often communicate using body movements like winks, waves, and nods. However, it is unclear how we identify when someone’s physical actions are communicative. Given people’s propensity to interpret each other’s behavior as aimed to produce changes in the world, we hypothesize that people expect communicative actions to efficiently reveal that they lack an external goal. Using computational models of goal inference, we predict that movements that are unlikely to be produced when acting towards the world and, in particular, repetitive ought to be seen as communicative. We find support for our account across a variety of paradigms, including graded acceptability tasks, forced-choice tasks, indirect prompts, and open-ended explanation tasks, in both market-integrated and non-market-integrated communities. Our work shows that the recognition of communicative action is grounded in an inferential process that stems from fundamental computations shared across different forms of action interpretation. Humans can quickly infer when someone’s body movements are meant to be communicative. Here, the authors show that this capacity is underpinned by an expectation that communicative actions will efficiently reveal that they lack an external goal.
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Affiliation(s)
- Amanda Royka
- Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA.
| | - Annie Chen
- Department of Computer Science, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
| | - Rosie Aboody
- Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
| | - Tomas Huanca
- Centro Boliviano de Desarrollo Socio-Integral, La paz, Bolivia
| | - Julian Jara-Ettinger
- Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA. .,Department of Computer Science, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA. .,Wu Tsai Institute, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA.
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Pitt B, Gibson E, Piantadosi ST. Exact Number Concepts Are Limited to the Verbal Count Range. Psychol Sci 2022; 33:371-381. [PMID: 35132893 PMCID: PMC9096449 DOI: 10.1177/09567976211034502] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/16/2021] [Accepted: 06/25/2021] [Indexed: 01/29/2023] Open
Abstract
Previous findings suggest that mentally representing exact numbers larger than four depends on a verbal count routine (e.g., "one, two, three . . ."). However, these findings are controversial because they rely on comparisons across radically different languages and cultures. We tested the role of language in number concepts within a single population-the Tsimane' of Bolivia-in which knowledge of number words varies across individual adults. We used a novel data-analysis model to quantify the point at which participants (N = 30) switched from exact to approximate number representations during a simple numerical matching task. The results show that these behavioral switch points were bounded by participants' verbal count ranges; their representations of exact cardinalities were limited to the number words they knew. Beyond that range, they resorted to numerical approximation. These results resolve competing accounts of previous findings and provide unambiguous evidence that large exact number concepts are enabled by language.
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Affiliation(s)
- Benjamin Pitt
- Department of Psychology, University of
California, Berkeley
| | - Edward Gibson
- Department of Brain and Cognitive
Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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Ferrigno S, Cheyette SJ, Piantadosi ST, Cantlon JF. Recursive sequence generation in monkeys, children, U.S. adults, and native Amazonians. SCIENCE ADVANCES 2020; 6:eaaz1002. [PMID: 32637593 PMCID: PMC7319756 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aaz1002] [Citation(s) in RCA: 25] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/13/2019] [Accepted: 05/12/2020] [Indexed: 05/28/2023]
Abstract
The question of what computational capacities, if any, differ between humans and nonhuman animals has been at the core of foundational debates in cognitive psychology, anthropology, linguistics, and animal behavior. The capacity to form nested hierarchical representations is hypothesized to be essential to uniquely human thought, but its origins in evolution, development, and culture are controversial. We used a nonlinguistic sequence generation task to test whether subjects generalize sequential groupings of items to a center-embedded, recursive structure. Children (3 to 5 years old), U.S. adults, and adults from a Bolivian indigenous group spontaneously induced recursive structures from ambiguous training data. In contrast, monkeys did so only with additional exposure. We quantify these patterns using a Bayesian mixture model over logically possible strategies. Our results show that recursive hierarchical strategies are robust in human thought, both early in development and across cultures, but the capacity itself is not unique to humans.
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