Determining the environment: a modal logic for closed interaction

The aim of the work is to provide a language to reason about Closed Interactions, i.e. all those situations in which the outcomes of an interaction can be determined by the agents themselves and in which the environment cannot interfere with they are able to determine. We will see that two different interpretations can be given of this restriction, both stemming from Pauly Representation Theorem. We will identify such restrictions and axiomatize their logic. We will apply the formal tools to reason about games and their regulation.     

The resolution and recovery of filler-gap dependencies in aphasia: evidence from on-line anomaly detection

This study examines the on-line processing of sentences with movement using an auditory anomaly detection task (after Borland, Tanenhaus, Garnsey, & Carlson, 1995). Eight agrammatic aphasic participants (four of whom had undergone treatment focused on comprehension and production of filler-gap sentences) and 24 young normal participants listened to sentences and pressed a button when the sentences "stopped making sense." Critical sentences contained an anomaly in object relative clauses or conjoined clauses. Results showed that both young normals and aphasic participants were able to reject anomalous sentences of both types. In addition, both groups showed evidence of filler-gap resolution on-line. Importantly, however, there was evidence of a treatment effect for the aphasic patients: those who received treatment showed better performance than those who had not. Treated patients were more successful than the untreated patients in detecting the anomaly in filler-gap conditions, rejecting the anomalous filler-gap sentences reliably more often than the non-anomalous ones, like the young normals. This effect was not noted for untreated participants, i.e., there was no statistical difference between their rejection of anomalous and non-anomalous filler gap sentences. Further, the reaction time data showed that the treated aphasic patients' rejections came before sentence's end (within 2000 ms), while the majority of responses made by untreated patients did not. These results indicate that individuals with agrammatic aphasia appear to retain some gap-filling capacity and that treatment can improve their ability to make use of this capacity.     

Belief and the basis of meaning

A theory of radical interpretation gives the meanings of all sentences of a language, and can be verified by evidence available to someone who does not understand the language. Such evidence cannot include detailed information concerning the beliefs and intentions of speakers, and therefore the theory must simultaneously interpret the utterances of speakers and specify (some of) his beliefs. Analogies and connections with decision theory suggest the kind of theory that will serve for radical interpretation, and how permissible evidence can support it.     

动词隐含因果语义对汉语高功能自闭症儿童代词加工的影响

个体在利用动词隐含因果语义线索确定代词所指的过程中会结合动词语义特征和语境信息两个方面,已有研究指出自闭症儿童在语言加工过程中无法有效利用语境信息,本研究采用句子理解任务,考察有无语境支持和不同动词类型（主语隐含型和宾语隐含型）四种条件下,汉语高功能自闭症儿童利用动词隐含因果语义信息加工代词的能力。结果显示,（1）汉语高功能自闭症儿童的代词加工表现显著差于典型发展儿童;（2）语境信息可以帮助被试确定代词所指,且对两组被试成绩的提高程度相当。以上结果表明汉语高功能自闭症儿童之所以无法利用动词的隐含因果语义线索确定代词所指的原因可能是他们对该类动词的语义表征存在问题,而非无法利用语境信息。     

动词隐含因果语义对汉语高功能自闭症儿童代词加工的影响

个体在利用动词隐含因果语义线索确定代词所指的过程中会结合动词语义特征和语境信息两个方面,已有研究指出自闭症儿童在语言加工过程中无法有效利用语境信息,本研究采用句子理解任务,考察有无语境支持和不同动词类型（主语隐含型和宾语隐含型）四种条件下,汉语高功能自闭症儿童利用动词隐含因果语义信息加工代词的能力。结果显示,（1）汉语高功能自闭症儿童的代词加工表现显著差于典型发展儿童;（2）语境信息可以帮助被试确定代词所指,且对两组被试成绩的提高程度相当。以上结果表明汉语高功能自闭症儿童之所以无法利用动词的隐含因果语义线索确定代词所指的原因可能是他们对该类动词的语义表征存在问题,而非无法利用语境信息。     

Against Characterizing Mental States as Propositional Attitudes

The reason for characterizing mental states as propositional attitudes is sentence form: ' S V s that p '. However, many mental states are not ascribed by means of such sentences, and the sentences that ascribe them cannot be appropriately paraphrased. Moreover, even if a paraphrase were always available, that in itself would not establish the characterization. And the mental states that are ascribable by appropriate senses do not form any natural subset of mental states. A reason for the characterization relying on beliefs, etc., about non-existing things is also rejected. Last, some sentences ascribing abilities and dispositions have the same grammatical form as some senses that ascribe mental states, so that the attempt to paraphrase the latter would obscure the conceptual relations between the two sorts. It follows that mental states are not relations to propositions.     

Audiovisual sentence recognition not predicted by susceptibility to the McGurk effect

In noisy situations, visual information plays a critical role in the success of speech communication: listeners are better able to understand speech when they can see the speaker. Visual influence on auditory speech perception is also observed in the McGurk effect, in which discrepant visual information alters listeners’ auditory perception of a spoken syllable. When hearing /ba/ while seeing a person saying /ga/, for example, listeners may report hearing /da/. Because these two phenomena have been assumed to arise from a common integration mechanism, the McGurk effect has often been used as a measure of audiovisual integration in speech perception. In this study, we test whether this assumed relationship exists within individual listeners. We measured participants’ susceptibility to the McGurk illusion as well as their ability to identify sentences in noise across a range of signal-to-noise ratios in audio-only and audiovisual modalities. Our results do not show a relationship between listeners’ McGurk susceptibility and their ability to use visual cues to understand spoken sentences in noise, suggesting that McGurk susceptibility may not be a valid measure of audiovisual integration in everyday speech processing.     

Production of graphic symbol sentences by individuals with aphasia: efficacy of a computer-based augmentative and alternative communication intervention

The study employed a single-subject multiple baseline design to examine the ability of 9 individuals with severe Broca's aphasia or global aphasia to produce graphic symbol sentences of varying syntactical complexity using a software program that turns a computer into a speech output communication device. The sentences ranged in complexity from simple two-word phrases to those with morphological inflections, transformations, and relative clauses. Overall, results indicated that individuals with aphasia are able to access, manipulate, and combine graphic symbols to produce phrases and sentences of varying degrees of syntactical complexity. The findings are discussed in terms of the clinical and public policy implications.     

The effect of syntactic structure upon speech initiation times of stuttering and nonstuttering speakers

Past research has shown that adults who stutter tend to be slower than adults who do not stutter at initiating various speech-like movements, nonsense syllables, words, short phrases, and simple sentences. The present study sought to extend this research by examining the effect that syntactic structure has upon stutterers' and nonstutterers' ability to initiate sentences. Eleven persons who stutter (mean age=22.2 years) and 11 nonstuttering controls (mean age=23.3 years) read, rehearsed, and then reproduced a series of 96 sentences within a simple reaction time paradigm. The sentences were presented in four blocks of 24 sentences, and each block contained one version of each of the 24 base sentences. Versions of the base sentences varied, from simple to complex, along four levels of syntactic complexity. Results indicated that speech initiation times (SITs) were significantly longer for participants who stutter than they were for nonstuttering controls for three of the four sentence types. There was no significant difference in SITs across the four sentence types for either group. Among the stuttering participants, there was no significant correlation between stuttering severity and overall initiation time for the sentences. Consistent with other studies, the present findings suggest that persons who stutter are slower than persons who do not stutter at planning and/or initiating motor movements associated with speech production. EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES: The reader will be able to (1). describe how persons who stutter typically perform during various reaction time tasks, (2). explain the rationale for examining the effect of syntactic complexity upon speech initiation time, (3). discuss how the speech initiation times of persons who stutter compare to those of persons who do not stutter during the production of various types of sentences, (4). identify future research needs in this area.     

The Use of Contextual Information Related to General World Knowledge by Right Brain-Damaged Individuals in Pronoun Resolution

This study investigated the ability of right brain-damaged individuals (RBD) to use contextual information to resolve ambiguous pronouns. Subjects were presented with sentence pairs and required to resolve the ambiguous pronoun in the second sentence. Contrary to the prevailing view that RBD patients have difficulty using contextual information to integrate language, the RBD group demonstrated a normal pattern of response, demonstrating a sensitivity to the pragmatic information contained in the leading sentence. They responded more quickly to sentences with a pragmatically constrained preferred referent than to those sentences for which there was no preferred referent. As well, they chose the preferred referent significantly more often than the non-preferred referent. These results suggest that RBD patients can use contextual information at the level of a minimal discourse (i.e., two sentences).     

The paradox of the first person singular pronoun

The author attempts to provide a characterization of statements which will avoid the twin perils of identifying them with sentences per se or with such non‐observable entities as “propositions”, “meanings” etc. In providing a positive account of the sorts of things statements are, he distinguishes between the utterances of sentences, and. sentences per se, and maintains that statements are to be identified with those utterances made in certain kinds of circumstances. In the light of this analysis, it is then argued that who or what the speaker refers to in the course of making a statement does not form part of the circumstances which determine what statement he is making, nor does it form part of the circumstances which determine whether he is making the same or different statements by the words he uses.     

The discursive form of human understanding as the source of the transcendental illusion

Kant famously claims that pure reason is subject to a transcendental illusion in which the subjective validity and the regulative use of a principle of reason are conflated with its objective validity and constitutive use. His doctrine of transcendental illusion is puzzling for he insists that this illusion is natural as well as necessary. The two dominant interpretation strategies cannot make sense of this puzzle because they turn out to be either too strong or too weak: they either struggle to account for the legitimate, regulative use of the transcendental principle of reason or fall short of explaining the necessity of the transcendental illusion. In contrast, I shall argue that it is possible to account for the fact that the transcendental illusion is natural and necessary because it has its source in the discursive form of our human understanding, and that this illusion can nevertheless be known to be illusory because our discursive nature can be recognised as a merely particular form of understanding by comparing it with a possible, intuitive form of understanding in an act of critical self-reflection.     

To be is not always to be The hypothesis of cognitive universality in the light of studies on elliptic language behaviour

Abstract.— This paper introduces evidence as to whether the cognitive base of natural languages is universal or not. When a speaker or writer has too little time or space to use complete, grammatically well-formed sentences, he will first leave out the parts of speech which are least essential for the decoding process of the receiver. If, in two different languages, different parts are left out, the cognitive base of the languages cannot be the same. It was predicted that native Finnish-speaking subjects will be more prone to leave out the verb from newspapers headings and from reports of sporting events, than will native Swedish-speaking subjects. In addition, it was expected that Finnish subjects will rate sentences lacking verbs as more, and sentences lacking nouns, as less "language correct" than will Swedish subjects. It was also predicted that in perception of a sporting event, Finnish reporters will focus on topological, and Swedish, on vectorial, information. The predictions were borne out exactly by the findings, which thus are strongly negative to the universality hypothesis.     

Induction,indifference and guessing

Pragmatism in semantics is hampered by its proponents' tendency to tie understanding too closely to our mastery of epistemic practice. Both Brandom's inferentialist semantics and the anti-realist semantics championed by Dummett and Tennant amply illustrate this tendency. As a consequence, neither theory can successfully handle cases of the innocuously unknowable in which two sentences, though mutually consistent, nonetheless cannot be known to be true together. On Brandom's account, such sentences are treated as being mutually inconsistent after all. According to both Dummett's and Tennant's version of anti-realist semantics, we cannot know that there are any true sentences of this kind. Neither result is the least acceptable, whence either theory fails. The lesson to be learnt from this failure is that understanding should not be identified with the ability to reach warranted verdicts, but with the ability to think, where thinking is constitutively involved in, but nonetheless distinct from judging.     

Comprehension in "hyperlexic" readers

Mentally retarded children who can read aloud written words better than one would expect from their Mental Age are often called hyperlexic. The reading comprehension thought to be impaired in such children was investigated in four experiments. Mentally retarded advanced decoders, including autistic and nonautistic children, were compared with younger nonretarded children matched for Mental Age and Reading Age. Experiment 1 established that mildly mentally retarded readers could match sentences to pictures as well as could be expected from their verbal ability. This was the same whether they read the sentences or heard them. Experiment 2 demonstrated that only the more able retarded subjects, but not the less able ones, used sentence context in a normal way in order to pronounce homographs. Experiments 3 and 4 showed that these same more able children could extract meaning at both sentence and story level, and their performance was indistinguishable from that of normal controls. Hence, it is doubtful whether these advanced decoders should be called hyperlexic. In contrast, the readers of relatively low verbal ability performed much worse than their normal controls. Although they could be induced under certain conditions to read sentence-by-sentence rather than word-by-word, they did not do so spontaneously. Furthermore, they did not make use of already existing general knowledge in order to answer questions about the stories they had read. The ability to comprehend in terms of large units of meaning seems to be specifically impaired in these low verbal ability fluent readers. We suggest that it is this impairment that marks true hyperlexia. Since there were no differences between autistic and nonautistic readers on any of our tasks, we conclude that hyperlexia is not an autism-specific phenomenon.     

Laws, Regularities and Exceptions

Sentences of the form ' F s are G s' can express laws of nature, weaker Special Science laws, and also regularities which are not a part of any explicit science. These so-called generic sentences express nomic relationships which may have exceptions. I discuss the kinds of regularities expressed by generic sentences and argue that since they play a similar role in determining our ability to categorise and reason about the world, we should look for a unified treatment of them.     

Types,Tokens, and Talk about Musical Works

It has recently been suggested that the type/token theorist concerning musical works cannot come up with an adequate semantic theory of those sentences in which we purport to talk about such works. Specifically, it has been claimed that, since types are abstract entities, a type/token theorist can only account for the truth of sentences such as “The 1812 Overture is very loud” and “Bach's Two Part Invention in C has an F‐sharp in its fourth measure” by adopting an untenable semantic claim: namely, that the predicates in such sentences, once applied to musical works, undergo a systematic shift in their meanings. This article is a sustained explanation of why our talk about musical works in fact provides no problem for the type/token theorist. First, we demonstrate that the aforementioned “meaning shift” approach to the sentences’ predicates is well motivated and very credible. Second, we explain how the type/token theorist can adopt the best available version of an alternative, generic quantificational approach to such sentences. Third, we establish that other semantic theories, presented as undermining the type/token theory by giving us a reason for adopting eliminativism about types, are much less theoretically virtuous than the two theories that a type/token theorist can freely adopt.     

Autism,episodic memory,and moral exemplars

This paper presents a challenge for exemplar theories of moral concepts. Some have proposed that we acquire moral concepts by way of exemplars of actions that are prohibited as well as of actions that are required, and we classify newly encountered actions based on their similarity to these exemplars. Judgments of (im)permissibility then follow from these exemplar-based classifications. However, if this were true, then we would expect that individuals who lacked, or were deficient in, the capacity to form or access exemplars of this kind would be similarly deficient in the ability to classify new actions according to them, and this relative inability would be manifested in the moral judgments made by such individuals. However, there is reason to suspect, I think, that a number of individuals who have been diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) actually have the deficiencies I have described here but are nevertheless fully able to make sound moral judgments. If this is so, then it must be the case that classifying actions as instances of a given moral concept and making judgments based on said classification does not rely solely on exemplars.