Bias in conceptual priming

In recent years, Ratcliff, McKoon, and colleagues have argued that priming in perceptual implicit memory tests is the result of biases in information processing. Three experiments are presented that extend this framework to the conceptual implicit memory domain. Participants studied a list of words before receiving a set of general knowledge questions. For some questions, participants studied the correct answer; for others, they studied a similar but incorrect answer. Although study of a correct answer facilitated performance, study of the similar alternative hurt performance. Costs and benefits of previous study were observed in both production and forced-choice tasks. However, there was no benefit of previous study when participants studied both the correct answer and the similar but incorrect alternative. The pattern of results indicates that participants were biased to respond with previously studied words on the conceptual implicit memory test. This pattern is concordant with the biased information-processing approach to priming.     

On the relation between conceptual engineering and conceptual ethics

In recent years, there has been growing discussion amongst philosophers about “conceptual engineering”. Put roughly, conceptual engineering concerns the assessment and improvement of concepts, or of other devices we use in thought and talk (e.g., words). This often involves attempts to modify our existing concepts (or other representational devices), and/or our practices of using them. This paper explores the relation between conceptual engineering and conceptual ethics, where conceptual ethics is taken to encompass normative and evaluative questions about concepts, words, and other broadly “representational” and/or “inferential” devices we use in thought and talk. We take some of the central questions in conceptual ethics to concern which concepts we should use and what words should mean, and why. We put forward a view of conceptual engineering in terms of the following three activities: conceptual ethics, conceptual innovation, and conceptual implementation. On our view, conceptual engineering can be defined in terms of these three activities, but not in a straightforward, Boolean way. Conceptual engineering, we argue, is made up of mereologically complex activities whose parts fall into the categories associated with each of these three different activities.     

The picture superiority effect in conceptual implicit memory: a conceptual distinctiveness hypothesis

According to leading theories, the picture superiority effect is driven by conceptual processing, yet this effect has been difficult to obtain using conceptual implicit memory tests. We hypothesized that the picture superiority effect results from conceptual processing of a picture's distinctive features rather than a picture's semantic features. To test this hypothesis, we used 2 conceptual implicit general knowledge tests; one cued conceptually distinctive features (e.g., "What animal has large eyes?") and the other cued semantic features (e.g., "What animal is the figurehead of Tootsie Roll?"). Results showed a picture superiority effect only on the conceptual test using distinctive cues, supporting our hypothesis that this effect is mediated by conceptual processing of a picture's distinctive features.     

Attentional factors in conceptual congruency

Conceptual congruency effects are biases induced by an irrelevant conceptual dimension of a task (e.g., location in vertical space) on the processing of another, relevant dimension (e.g., judging words' emotional evaluation). Such effects are a central empirical pillar for recent views about how the mind/brain represents concepts. In the present paper, we show how attentional cueing (both exogenous and endogenous) to each conceptual dimension succeeds in modifying both the manifestation and the symmetry of the effect. The theoretical implications of this finding are discussed.     

Property instantiation in conceptual combination

In four experiments, I examined how a property in one concept is transferred to a second concept during conceptual combination. The results suggest that people instantiate properties: that is, they use a specific representation of a property in the modifier concept to construct a new version of that property that is specific to the combination. If people are instantiating properties, then the modifier property should match its counterpart in the combination to the extent that the modifier and head noun are similar. This observation leads to a variety of predictions (supported by the experiments) about interpretations of similar and dissimilar combinations and about plausibility, preference, and similarity judgments associated with such interpretations. The results argue against an alternative view of transfer that posits that, in general, abstract representations of properties are copied from one concept to another. In this paper, I describe various processing accounts of instantiation and discuss the implications of the instantiation view for theories of metaphor, conceptual combination, and induction.     

Using relations within conceptual systems to translate across conceptual systems

According to an "external grounding" theory of meaning, a concept's meaning depends on its connection to the external world. By a "conceptual web" account, a concept's meaning depends on its relations to other concepts within the same system. We explore one aspect of meaning, the identification of matching concepts across systems (e.g. people, theories, or cultures). We present a computational algorithm called ABSURDIST (Aligning Between Systems Using Relations Derived Inside Systems for Translation) that uses only within-system similarity relations to find between-system translations. While illustrating the sufficiency of a conceptual web account for translating between systems, simulations of ABSURDIST also indicate powerful synergistic interactions between intrinsic, within-system information and extrinsic information.     

Inferring conceptual graphs

This paper investigates the mechanisms a program may use to learn conceptual structures that represent natural language meaning. A computer program named Moran is described that infers conceptual structures from pictorial input data. Moran is presented with “snapshots” of an environment and an English sentence describing the action that takes place between the snapshots. The learning task is to associate each root verb with a conceptual structure that represents the types of objects that participate in the action and the changes the objects undergo during the action. Four learning mechanisms are shown to be adequate to accomplish this learning task. The learning mechanisms are described along with the conditions under which each is invoked and the effect each has on existing memory structures. The conceptual structure Moran inferred for one root verb is shown.     

Judgment of conceptual identity in monkeys

Baboons (Papio anubis) were tested on categorization tasks at two different conceptual levels. The monkeys showed their ability (1) to judge as identical or different the objects belonging to two categories, on a perceptual basis, and (2) to perform a judgment of conceptual identity—that is, to use the same/different relation between two previously learned categories. This latter experiment represents the first demonstration of judgment of conceptual identity in a monkey species.     

Continuous information processing in conceptual identifications

Summary This investigation was aimed at the analysis of processes of the conceptual object identification. Three experiments were performed which utilized a response preparation paradigm developed by Miller (1982). The results confirm the psychological validity of a distinction between sensorily and categorially represented concepts proposed formerly by the authors. The process of identification of objects as belonging to sensory concepts was analysed in more detail. The experimental results suggest that it may be a sequential feature matching process which is characterized by continuous information processing. Early in the process the figurative features allowing an identification of an object as belonging to a more general sensory concept are processed. In following processing stages this first conceptual identification is more and more specified by an additional checking of more detailed figurative features. More importantly, the results indicate that the information about the general conceptual identity of an object is not only available early in the identification process but can also be used for the preparation of following processes or processing stages even before the object is fully identified. Possible influences of the early information on the control of the conceptual identification itself and on the selection and control of motor behavior are discussed.We wish to thank the following psychology students at the Humboldt University in Berlin for their help in performing the experiments: Kathrin Hänel, Erika Küchler and Christina Matthé. Furthermore, we wish to thank the two anaonymous reviewers and Johannes Engelkamp for their helpful comments on a first draft of our paper     

Data and phenomena in conceptual modelling

The distinction between data and phenomena introduced by Bogen and Woodward (Philosophical Review 97(3):303–352, 1988) was meant to help accounting for scientific practice, especially in relation with scientific theory testing. Their article and the subsequent discussion is primarily viewed as internal to philosophy of science. We shall argue that the data/phenomena distinction can be used much more broadly in modelling processes in philosophy.     

Defining disease beyond conceptual analysis: an analysis of conceptual analysis in philosophy of medicine

Conceptual analysis of health and disease is portrayed as consisting in the confrontation of a set of criteria—a “definition”—with a set of cases, called instances of either “health” or “disease.” Apart from logical counter-arguments, there is no other way to refute an opponent’s definition than by providing counter-cases. As resorting to intensional stipulation (stipulation of meaning) is not forbidden, several contenders can therefore be deemed to have succeeded. This implies that conceptual analysis alone is not likely to decide between naturalism and normativism. An alternative to this approach would be to examine whether the concept of disease can be naturalized.     

Stopping Criteria in Sequential Choice

The essential decision in sequential choice is not which alternative to choose but when to stop acquiring additional information and commit to the leading alternative. Two studies investigate individuals’ stopping strategies. The key difference between the two studies is whether the experimenter or subjects controlled the order in which information was acquired. We hypothesize that subjects’ stopping criteria do not remain fixed, but are sensitive to acquisition costs and to the achieved progress during the choice. Across both studies 21 of 26 subjects exhibited significant adaptation. We also found an effort-reducing heuristic, stopping after all attributes in a predetermined set of core attributes had been acquired. As expected, use of this Core Attributes heuristic was greater when subjects controlled the order in which information was acquired. Both adaptation and the Core Attributes heuristic are compatible with the adaptive view of decision making and with the cost-benefit framework more generally.     

Hybrid analogies in conceptual innovation in science

Analogies are ubiquitous in science, both in theory and experiments. Based on an ethnographic study of a research lab in neural engineering, we focus on a case of conceptual innovation where the cross-breeding of two types of analogies led to a breakthrough. In vivo phenomena were recreated in two analogical forms: one, as an in vitro physical model, and the other, as a computational model of the first physical model. The computational model also embodied constraints drawn from the neuroscience and engineering literature. Cross connections and linkages were then made between these two analogical models, over time, to solve problems. We describe how the development of the intermediary, hybrid computational model led to a conceptual innovation, and subsequent engineering innovations. Using this case study, we highlight some of the peculiar features of such hybrid analogies that are now used widely in the sciences and engineering sciences, and the significant questions they raise for current theories of analogy.