Processing of Numerical and Proportional Quantifiers |
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| Authors: | Sailee Shikhare Stefan Heim Elise Klein Stefan Huber Klaus Willmes |
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| Affiliation: | 1. Department of Neurology, University Hospital, Aachen;2. Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, University Hospital, Aachen;3. JARATranslational Brain Medicine;4. Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM‐1), Research Centre Jülich, Germany;5. Interdisciplinary Center for Clinical Research, University Hospital, Aachen;6. Knowledge Media Research Center, IWM‐KMRC, Tübingen, Germany;7. Department of Psychology, Eberhard Karls University, Tübingen |
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| Abstract: | Quantifier expressions like “many” and “at least” are part of a rich repository of words in language representing magnitude information. The role of numerical processing in comprehending quantifiers was studied in a semantic truth value judgment task, asking adults to quickly verify sentences about visual displays using numerical (at least seven, at least thirteen, at most seven, at most thirteen) or proportional (many, few) quantifiers. The visual displays were composed of systematically varied proportions of yellow and blue circles. The results demonstrated that numerical estimation and numerical reference information are fundamental in encoding the meaning of quantifiers in terms of response times and acceptability judgments. However, a difference emerges in the comparison strategies when a fixed external reference numerosity (seven or thirteen) is used for numerical quantifiers, whereas an internal numerical criterion is invoked for proportional quantifiers. Moreover, for both quantifier types, quantifier semantics and its polarity (positive vs. negative) biased the response direction (accept/reject). Overall, our results indicate that quantifier comprehension involves core numerical and lexical semantic properties, demonstrating integrated processing of language and numbers. |
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| Keywords: | Numerical and proportional quantifiers Numerical estimation Numerical comparison Semantic polarity |
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