Three- and four-year-olds’ perceptual confusions for spoken words

Although infants have the ability to discriminate a variety of speech contrasts, young children cannot always use this ability in the service of spoken-word recognition. The research reported here asked whether the reason young children sometimes fail to discriminate minimal word pairs is that they are less efficient at word recognition than adults, or whether it is that they employ different lexical representations. In particular, the research evaluated the proposal that young children’s lexical representations are more “holistic” than those of adults, and are based on overall acoustic-phonetic properties, as opposed to phonetic segments. Three- and four-year-olds were exposed initially to an invariant target word and were subsequently asked to determine whether a series of auditory stimuli matched or did not match the target. The critical test stimuli were nonwords that varied in their degree of phonetic featural overlap with the target, as well as in terms of the position(s) within the stimuli at which they differed from the target, and whether they differed from the target on one or two segments. Data from four experiments demonstrated that the frequency with which children mistook a nonword stimulus for the target was influenced by extent of featural overlap, but not by word position. The data also showed that, contrary to the predictions of the holistic hypothesis, stimuli differing from the target by two features on a single segment were confused with the target more often than were stimuli differing by a single feature on each of two segments. This finding suggests that children use both phonetic features and segments in accessing their mental lexicons, and that they are therefore much more similar to adults than is suggested by the holistic hypothesis.     

Is There a Simple Argument for Higher-Order Representation Theories of Awareness Consciousness?

William Lycan has articulated “a simple argument” for higher-order representation (HOR) theories of a variety of consciousness sometimes labeled ‘awareness consciousness’ (Lycan, Analysis 61.1, January 3–4, 2001). The purpose of this article is to critically assess the influential argument-strategy of the simple argument. I argue that, as stated, the simple argument fails since it is invalid. Moreover, I argue that an obvious “quick fix” would beg the question against competing same-order representation (SOR) theories of awareness consciousness. I then provide a reconstruction of the argument and argue that although the reconstructed argument deserves consideration, it is also too simple as stated. In particular, it raises several controversial questions about the nature of mental representation. These questions must be addressed before a verdict as to the cogency of the HOR argument-strategy can be reached. But since the questions are controversial, a cogent argument for HOR theories of awareness consciousness is unlikely to be simple.

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OUTSOURCED COGNITION

Recent developments in technologically enabled social cognition call for a rethinking of many aspects of human cognition. According to the hypothesis of extended cognition, we must revise our psychological categories by eliminating allegedly superficial distinctions between internal cognition and external processes. As an alternative to this proposal, I outline a hypothesis of outsourced cognition which seeks to respect distinctions that are operative in both folk psychology and the social and cognitive sciences. According to this hypothesis, the cognitive states and processes of the individual are substantially and explanatorily distinct from the relevant external states and processes. In consequence, the individual remains a cognitive unit that is both central and indispensable in the explanations of cognitive science. As a case study, I consider the epistemology of testimony. I will argue that important epistemological categories may be preserved by adopting the hypothesis of outsourced cognition over the hypothesis of extended cognition. Moreover, I will argue that the outsourced cognition hypothesis deepens the problems that beset an extended epistemology of testimony.     

Univocal Reasoning and Inferential Presuppositions

I pursue an answer to the psychological question “what is it for S to presuppose that p?” I will not attempt a general answer. Rather, I will explore a particular kind of presuppositions that are constituted by the mental act of reasoning: Inferential presuppositions. Indeed, I will consider a specific kind of inferential presuppositions—one that is constituted by a specific reasoning competence: The univocality competence. Roughly, this is the competence that reliably governs the univocal thought-components’ operation as univocal in a line of reasoning. I will argue that the exercise of this reasoning competence constitutes certain inferential presuppositions. More specifically, I outline a conception of an inferential presupposition as a non-attitudinal but genuinely psychological and rationally committing relation that holds between a reasoner and a proposition. Thus, inferential presuppositions may be distinguished from tacit or standing attitudes that function as premise-beliefs in reasoning. Likewise inferential presuppositions may be distinguished from other kinds of presuppositions. In conclusion, I note some features of inferential presuppositions that bear on the epistemology of inference.     

Shetland ponies (Equus caballus) show quantity discrimination in a matching-to-sample design

Numerical competence is one of the aspects of animal cognition with a long history of research interest, but few results are available for the horse. In the present study, we investigated the ability of three Shetland ponies to discriminate between different quantities of geometric symbols presented on a computer screen in a matching-to-sample arrangement. In Experiment 1, the ponies had to relate two similar quantities to another, paired in contrasts (1 vs. 2, 3 vs. 4 and 4 vs. 5) of the same stimulus (dot). Specific pairs of quantities (all differing by one) of up to five different geometrical symbols were displayed in Experiment 2. In each session, both quantities (more and less) were used as sample in such a way that each of the two quantities presented in one test served as positive and as negative stimulus, respectively. The three Shetland ponies were able to discriminate between the given quantities of dots by showing more than 80 % correct responses in two consecutive sessions. Only one of the ponies distinguished different shapes of geometric symbols at a level of 4 versus 5 items. The results show that all ponies were capable of visual quantity discrimination in the present matching-to-sample design, but task solving seemed more difficult when quantities were composed of heterogeneous stimuli. The present results confirm our hypothesis that the ponies based their decision on the matching concept of sameness and were not biased by a spontaneous preference for higher quantities.     

A puzzle about mental self-representation and causation

The paper articulates a puzzle that consists in the prima facie incompatibility between three widely accepted theses. The first thesis is, roughly, that there are intrinsically self-representational thoughts. The second thesis is, roughly, that there is a particular causal constraint on mental representation. The third thesis is, roughly, that nothing causes itself. In this paper, the theses are articulated in a less rough manner with the occurrence of the puzzle as a result. Finally, a number of solution strategies are considered, and a preliminary diagnosis is provided.     

Three-year-old children can access their own memory to guide responses on a visual matching task

Many models of learning rely on accessing internal knowledge states. Yet, although infants and young children are recognized to be proficient learners, the ability to act on metacognitive information is not thought to develop until early school years. In the experiments reported here, 3.5-year-olds demonstrated memory-monitoring skills by responding on a non-verbal task originally developed for non-human animals, in which they had to access their knowledge states. Children learned a set of paired associates, and were given the option to skip uncertain trials on a recognition memory test. Accuracy for accepted items was significantly higher than for skipped on a subsequent memory task that included all items. Additionally, children whose memory-monitoring assessments more closely matched actual memory performance showed superior overall learning, suggesting a correlation between memory-monitoring and memory itself. The results suggest that children may have implicit access to internal knowledge states at very young ages, providing an explanation for how they are able to guide learning, even as infants.     

From domain-generality to domain-sensitivity: 4-Month-olds learn an abstract repetition rule in music that 7-month-olds do not

Learning must be constrained for it to lead to productive generalizations. Although biology is undoubtedly an important source of constraints, prior experience may be another, leading learners to represent input in ways that are more conducive to some generalizations than others, and/or to up- and down-weight features when entertaining generalizations. In two experiments, 4-month-old and 7-month-old infants were familiarized with sequences of musical chords or tones adhering either to an AAB pattern or an ABA pattern. In both cases, the 4-month-olds learned the generalization, but the 7-month-olds did not. The success of the 4-month-olds appears to contradict an account that this type of pattern learning is the provenance of a language-specific rule-learning module. It is not yet clear what drives the age-related change, but plausible candidates include differential experience with language and music, as well as interactions between general cognitive development and stimulus complexity.     

Artificial grammar learning by 1-year-olds leads to specific and abstract knowledge.

Four experiments used the head-turn preference procedure to assess whether infants could extract and remember information from auditory strings produced by a miniature artificial grammar. In all four experiments, infants generalized to new structure by discriminating new grammatical strings from ungrammatical ones after less than 2 min exposure to the grammar. Infants acquired specific information about the grammar as demonstrated by the ability to discriminate new grammatical strings from those with illegal endpoints (Experiment 1). Infants also discriminated new grammatical strings from those with string-internal pairwise violations (Experiments 2 and 3). Infants in Experiment 4 abstracted beyond specific word order as demonstrated by the ability to discriminate new strings produced by their training grammar from strings produced by another grammar despite a change in vocabulary between training and test. We discuss the implications of these findings for the study of language acquisition.