1
|
Yu X, Pöppel E, Zhan W, Bao Y. Cognitive entailments among "the true, the good, the beautiful": a mainland Chinese sample. Cogn Process 2024:10.1007/s10339-024-01200-5. [PMID: 38811462 DOI: 10.1007/s10339-024-01200-5] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/03/2023] [Accepted: 05/14/2024] [Indexed: 05/31/2024]
Abstract
Philosophers and cognitive scientists have long debated about the entailments among "the true, the good, the beautiful" (TGB hereafter). In the current article, we directly probed mainland Chinese subjects' cognitive entailment among TGB. Using 1-7 (Experiment 1) and 1-6 (Experiment 2) Likert scales, we convergently observed that mainland Chinese subjects tend to think that the beautiful is not the true, and that the good is the beautiful. Additionally, Experiment 1 also revealed that mainland Chinese subjects tend to think that the true is not the beautiful. Some of these results may reflect anthropological universals, and some others may reflect cultural specifics. Experiment 3 revealed that the most popular translation of TGB in Chinese into English is rather "the true, the kind, the beautiful", suggesting that the three concepts mapped to TGB in Chinese is not one-to-one mapped to the three concepts mapped to TGB in English. Therefore, caution should be exercised when making cross-linguistic or cross-cultural comparisons about TGB in the future.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Xinchi Yu
- School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China
- Program in Neuroscience and Cognitive Science, University of Maryland, College Park, USA
- Department of Linguistics, University of Maryland, College Park, USA
| | - Ernst Pöppel
- School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China
- Institute of Medical Psychology, Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich, Germany
| | - Weidong Zhan
- Department of Chinese Language and Literature, Peking University, Beijing, China
| | - Yan Bao
- School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China.
- Beijing Key Laboratory of Behavior and Mental Health, Peking University, Beijing, China.
| |
Collapse
|
2
|
Ozaki Y, Tierney A, Pfordresher PQ, McBride JM, Benetos E, Proutskova P, Chiba G, Liu F, Jacoby N, Purdy SC, Opondo P, Fitch WT, Hegde S, Rocamora M, Thorne R, Nweke F, Sadaphal DP, Sadaphal PM, Hadavi S, Fujii S, Choo S, Naruse M, Ehara U, Sy L, Parselelo ML, Anglada-Tort M, Hansen NC, Haiduk F, Færøvik U, Magalhães V, Krzyżanowski W, Shcherbakova O, Hereld D, Barbosa BS, Varella MAC, van Tongeren M, Dessiatnitchenko P, Zar SZ, El Kahla I, Muslu O, Troy J, Lomsadze T, Kurdova D, Tsope C, Fredriksson D, Arabadjiev A, Sarbah JP, Arhine A, Meachair TÓ, Silva-Zurita J, Soto-Silva I, Millalonco NEM, Ambrazevičius R, Loui P, Ravignani A, Jadoul Y, Larrouy-Maestri P, Bruder C, Teyxokawa TP, Kuikuro U, Natsitsabui R, Sagarzazu NB, Raviv L, Zeng M, Varnosfaderani SD, Gómez-Cañón JS, Kolff K, der Nederlanden CVB, Chhatwal M, David RM, Setiawan IPG, Lekakul G, Borsan VN, Nguqu N, Savage PE. Globally, songs and instrumental melodies are slower and higher and use more stable pitches than speech: A Registered Report. SCIENCE ADVANCES 2024; 10:eadm9797. [PMID: 38748798 PMCID: PMC11095461 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adm9797] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/15/2023] [Accepted: 04/19/2024] [Indexed: 05/19/2024]
Abstract
Both music and language are found in all known human societies, yet no studies have compared similarities and differences between song, speech, and instrumental music on a global scale. In this Registered Report, we analyzed two global datasets: (i) 300 annotated audio recordings representing matched sets of traditional songs, recited lyrics, conversational speech, and instrumental melodies from our 75 coauthors speaking 55 languages; and (ii) 418 previously published adult-directed song and speech recordings from 209 individuals speaking 16 languages. Of our six preregistered predictions, five were strongly supported: Relative to speech, songs use (i) higher pitch, (ii) slower temporal rate, and (iii) more stable pitches, while both songs and speech used similar (iv) pitch interval size and (v) timbral brightness. Exploratory analyses suggest that features vary along a "musi-linguistic" continuum when including instrumental melodies and recited lyrics. Our study provides strong empirical evidence of cross-cultural regularities in music and speech.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Yuto Ozaki
- Graduate School of Media and Governance, Keio University, Fujisawa, Kanagawa, Japan
| | - Adam Tierney
- Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck, University of London, London, UK
| | - Peter Q. Pfordresher
- Department of Psychology, University at Buffalo, State University of New York, Buffalo, NY, USA
| | - John M. McBride
- Center for Algorithmic and Robotized Synthesis, Institute for Basic Science, Ulsan, South Korea
| | - Emmanouil Benetos
- School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK
| | - Polina Proutskova
- School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK
| | - Gakuto Chiba
- Graduate School of Media and Governance, Keio University, Fujisawa, Kanagawa, Japan
| | - Fang Liu
- School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences, University of Reading, Reading, UK
| | - Nori Jacoby
- Computational Auditory Perception Group, Max-Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
| | - Suzanne C. Purdy
- School of Psychology, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
- Centre for Brain Research and Eisdell Moore Centre for Hearing and Balance Research, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
| | - Patricia Opondo
- School of Arts, Music Discipline, University of KwaZulu Natal, Durban, South Africa
| | - W. Tecumseh Fitch
- Department of Behavioral and Cognitive Biology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
| | - Shantala Hegde
- Music Cognition Lab, Department of Clinical Psychology, National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences, Bangalore, Karnataka, India
| | - Martín Rocamora
- Universidad de la República, Montevideo, Uruguay
- Music Technology Group, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain
| | - Rob Thorne
- School of Music, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand
| | - Florence Nweke
- Department of Creative Arts, University of Lagos, Lagos, Nigeria
- Department of Music, Mountain Top University, Ogun, Nigeria
| | - Dhwani P. Sadaphal
- Department of Behavioral and Cognitive Biology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
| | | | - Shafagh Hadavi
- Graduate School of Media and Governance, Keio University, Fujisawa, Kanagawa, Japan
| | - Shinya Fujii
- Faculty of Environment and Information Studies, Keio University, Fujisawa, Kanagawa, Japan
| | - Sangbuem Choo
- Graduate School of Media and Governance, Keio University, Fujisawa, Kanagawa, Japan
| | - Marin Naruse
- Faculty of Policy Management, Keio University, Fujisawa, Kanagawa, Japan
| | | | - Latyr Sy
- Independent researcher, Tokyo, Japan
- Independent researcher, Dakar, Sénégal
| | - Mark Lenini Parselelo
- Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, NL, Canada
- Department of Music and Dance, Kenyatta University, Nairobi, Kenya
| | | | - Niels Chr. Hansen
- Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
- Centre of Excellence in Music, Mind, Body and Brain, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland
- Interacting Minds Centre, School of Culture and Society, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
- Royal Academy of Music Aarhus/Aalborg, Aarhus, Denmark
| | - Felix Haiduk
- Department of Behavioral and Cognitive Biology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
- Department of General Psychology, University of Padua, Padua, Italy
| | - Ulvhild Færøvik
- Institute of Biological and Medical Psychology, Department of Psychology, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway
| | - Violeta Magalhães
- Centre of Linguistics of the University of Porto (CLUP), Porto, Portugal
- Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Porto (FLUP), Porto, Portugal
- School of Education of the Polytechnic of Porto (ESE IPP), Porto, Portugal
| | - Wojciech Krzyżanowski
- Adam Mickiewicz University, Faculty of Art Studies, Musicology Institute, Poznań, Poland
| | | | - Diana Hereld
- Department of Psychiatry, UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, Los Angeles, CA, USA
| | | | | | | | | | - Su Zar Zar
- Headmistress, The Royal Music Academy, Yangon, Myanmar
| | - Iyadh El Kahla
- Department of Cultural Policy, University of Hildesheim, Hildesheim, Germany
| | - Olcay Muslu
- Centre for the Study of Higher Education, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK
- MIRAS, Centre for Cultural Sustainability, Istanbul, Turkey
| | - Jakelin Troy
- Director, Indigenous Research, Office of the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research); Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, The University of Sydney, Camperdown, NSW, Australia
| | - Teona Lomsadze
- International Research Center for Traditional Polyphony of the Tbilisi State Conservatoire, Tbilisi, Georgia
- Georgian Studies Fellow, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
| | - Dilyana Kurdova
- South-West University Neofit Rilski, Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria
- Phoenix Perpeticum Foundation, Sofia, Bulgaria
| | | | | | - Aleksandar Arabadjiev
- Department of Folk Music Research and Ethnomusicology, University of Music and Performing Arts–MDW, Wien, Austria
| | | | - Adwoa Arhine
- Department of Music, University of Ghana, Accra, Ghana
| | - Tadhg Ó Meachair
- Department of Ethnomusicology and Folklore, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA
| | - Javier Silva-Zurita
- Department of Humanities and Arts, University of Los Lagos, Osorno, Chile
- Millennium Nucleus on Musical and Sound Cultures (CMUS NCS 2022-16), Santiago, Chile
| | - Ignacio Soto-Silva
- Department of Humanities and Arts, University of Los Lagos, Osorno, Chile
- Millennium Nucleus on Musical and Sound Cultures (CMUS NCS 2022-16), Santiago, Chile
| | | | | | - Psyche Loui
- Music, Imaging and Neural Dynamics Lab, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Andrea Ravignani
- Department of Human Neurosciences, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy
- Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, Netherlands
- Center for Music in the Brain, Department of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark & The Royal Academy of Music Aarhus/Aalborg, Aarhus, Denmark
| | - Yannick Jadoul
- Department of Human Neurosciences, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy
- Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, Netherlands
| | - Pauline Larrouy-Maestri
- Music Department, Max-Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
- Max Planck—NYU Center for Language, Music, and Emotion (CLaME), New York, NY, USA
| | - Camila Bruder
- Music Department, Max-Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
| | - Tutushamum Puri Teyxokawa
- Txemim Puri Project–Puri Language Research, Vitalization and Teaching/Recording and Preservation of Puri History and Culture, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil
| | | | | | | | - Limor Raviv
- Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, Netherlands
- cSCAN, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK
| | - Minyu Zeng
- Graduate School of Media and Governance, Keio University, Fujisawa, Kanagawa, Japan
- Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI, USA
| | - Shahaboddin Dabaghi Varnosfaderani
- Institute for English and American Studies (IEAS), Goethe University of Frankfurt am Main, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
- Cognitive and Developmental Psychology Unit, Centre, for Cognitive Science, University of Kaiserslautern-Landau (RPTU), Kaiserslautern, Germany
| | | | - Kayla Kolff
- Institute of Cognitive Science, University of Osnabrück, Osnabrück, Germany
| | | | - Meyha Chhatwal
- Department of Psychology, University of Toronto Mississauga, Mississauga, ON, Canada
| | - Ryan Mark David
- Department of Psychology, University of Toronto Mississauga, Mississauga, ON, Canada
| | | | - Great Lekakul
- Faculty of Fine Arts, Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai, Thailand
| | - Vanessa Nina Borsan
- Graduate School of Media and Governance, Keio University, Fujisawa, Kanagawa, Japan
- Université de Lille, CNRS, Centrale Lille, UMR 9189 CRIStAL, F-59000 Lille, France
| | - Nozuko Nguqu
- School of Arts, Music Discipline, University of KwaZulu Natal, Durban, South Africa
| | - Patrick E. Savage
- School of Psychology, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
- Faculty of Environment and Information Studies, Keio University, Fujisawa, Kanagawa, Japan
| |
Collapse
|
3
|
Ozernov-Palchik O, O'Brien AM, Lee EJ, Richardson H, Romeo R, Lipkin B, Small H, Capella J, Nieto-Castañón A, Saxe R, Gabrieli JDE, Fedorenko E. Precision fMRI reveals that the language network exhibits adult-like left-hemispheric lateralization by 4 years of age. BIORXIV : THE PREPRINT SERVER FOR BIOLOGY 2024:2024.05.15.594172. [PMID: 38798360 PMCID: PMC11118489 DOI: 10.1101/2024.05.15.594172] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/29/2024]
Abstract
Left hemisphere damage in adulthood often leads to linguistic deficits, but many cases of early damage leave linguistic processing preserved, and a functional language system can develop in the right hemisphere. To explain this early apparent equipotentiality of the two hemispheres for language, some have proposed that the language system is bilateral during early development and only becomes left-lateralized with age. We examined language lateralization using functional magnetic resonance imaging with two large pediatric cohorts (total n=273 children ages 4-16; n=107 adults). Strong, adult-level left-hemispheric lateralization (in activation volume and response magnitude) was evident by age 4. Thus, although the right hemisphere can take over language function in some cases of early brain damage, and although some features of the language system do show protracted development (magnitude of language response and strength of inter-regional correlations in the language network), the left-hemisphere bias for language is robustly present by 4 years of age.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Ola Ozernov-Palchik
- McGovern Institute for Brain Research, MIT, Cambridge, MA 02139, United States
| | - Amanda M O'Brien
- Program in Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, United States
| | - Elizabeth Jiachen Lee
- McGovern Institute for Brain Research, MIT, Cambridge, MA 02139, United States
- Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT, Cambridge, MA 02139, United States
| | - Hilary Richardson
- School of Philosophy, Psychology, and Language Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH8 9JZ, United Kingdom
| | - Rachel Romeo
- Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, United States
| | - Benjamin Lipkin
- McGovern Institute for Brain Research, MIT, Cambridge, MA 02139, United States
- Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT, Cambridge, MA 02139, United States
| | - Hannah Small
- Department of Cognitive Science, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, 21218, United States
| | - Jimmy Capella
- Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, United States
| | | | - Rebecca Saxe
- McGovern Institute for Brain Research, MIT, Cambridge, MA 02139, United States
- Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT, Cambridge, MA 02139, United States
| | - John D E Gabrieli
- McGovern Institute for Brain Research, MIT, Cambridge, MA 02139, United States
- Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT, Cambridge, MA 02139, United States
| | - Evelina Fedorenko
- McGovern Institute for Brain Research, MIT, Cambridge, MA 02139, United States
- Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT, Cambridge, MA 02139, United States
| |
Collapse
|
4
|
Franiatte N, Boissin E, Delmas A, De Neys W. Adieu Bias: Debiasing Intuitions Among French Speakers. Psychol Belg 2024; 64:42-57. [PMID: 38638272 PMCID: PMC11025568 DOI: 10.5334/pb.1260] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/13/2023] [Accepted: 03/24/2024] [Indexed: 04/20/2024] Open
Abstract
Recent debiasing studies have shown that a short, plain-English explanation of the correct solution strategy can improve reasoning performance. However, these studies have predominantly focused on English-speaking populations, who were tested with problem contents designed for an English-speaking test environment. Here we explore whether the key findings of previous debiasing studies can be extended to native French speakers living in continental Europe (France). We ran a training session with a battery of three reasoning tasks (i.e., base-rate neglect, conjunction fallacy, and bat-and-ball) on 147 native French speakers. We used a two-response paradigm in which participants first gave an initial intuitive response, under time pressure and cognitive load, and then gave a final response after deliberation. Results showed a clear training effect, as early as the initial (intuitive) stage. Immediately after training, most participants solved the problems correctly, without the need for a deliberation process. The findings confirm that the intuitive debiasing training effect extends to native French speakers.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Nina Franiatte
- UniversitéParis Cité, LaPsyDÉ, CNRS, 46 rue Saint Jacques, 75005 Paris, France
- Research and Development Team, Onepoint, 2 rue Marc Sangnier, 33110 Bègles, France
| | - Esther Boissin
- UniversitéParis Cité, LaPsyDÉ, CNRS, 46 rue Saint Jacques, 75005 Paris, France
| | - Alexandra Delmas
- Research and Development Team, Onepoint, 2 rue Marc Sangnier, 33110 Bègles, France
| | - Wim De Neys
- UniversitéParis Cité, LaPsyDÉ, CNRS, 46 rue Saint Jacques, 75005 Paris, France
| |
Collapse
|
5
|
Dolscheid S, Schlenter J, Penke M. Literacy overrides effects of animacy: A picture-naming study with pre-literate German children and adult speakers of German and Arabic. PLoS One 2024; 19:e0298659. [PMID: 38630766 PMCID: PMC11023297 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0298659] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/16/2023] [Accepted: 01/30/2024] [Indexed: 04/19/2024] Open
Abstract
Animacy plays a key role for human cognition, which is also reflected in the way humans process language. However, while experiments on sentence processing show reliable effects of animacy on word order and grammatical function assignment, effects of animacy on conjoined noun phrases (e.g., fish and shoe vs. shoe and fish) have yielded inconsistent results. In the present study, we tested the possibility that effects of animacy are outranked by reading and writing habits. We examined adult speakers of German (left-to-right script) and speakers of Arabic (right-to-left script), as well as German preschool children who do not yet know how to read and write. Participants were tested in a picture naming task that presented an animate and an inanimate entity next to one another. On half of the trials, the animate entity was located on the left and, on the other half, it was located on the right side of the screen. We found that adult German and Arabic speakers differed in their order of naming. Whereas German speakers were much more likely to mention the animate entity first when it was presented on the left than on the right, a reverse tendency was observed for speakers of Arabic. Thus, in literate adults, the ordering of conjoined noun phrases was influenced by reading and writing habits rather than by the animacy status of an entity. By contrast, pre-literate children preferred to start their utterances with the animate entity regardless of position, suggesting that effects of animacy in adults have been overwritten by effects of literacy.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Sarah Dolscheid
- Department of Rehabilitation and Special Education, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany
| | - Judith Schlenter
- Department of Language and Culture, UIT The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway
| | - Martina Penke
- Department of Rehabilitation and Special Education, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany
| |
Collapse
|
6
|
Binoy S, Lithwick Algon A, Ben Adiva Y, Montaser-Kouhsari L, Saban W. Online cognitive testing in Parkinson's disease: advantages and challenges. Front Neurol 2024; 15:1363513. [PMID: 38651103 PMCID: PMC11034553 DOI: 10.3389/fneur.2024.1363513] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/30/2023] [Accepted: 03/27/2024] [Indexed: 04/25/2024] Open
Abstract
Parkinson's disease (PD) is primarily characterized by motor symptoms. Yet, many people with PD experience cognitive decline, which is often unnoticed by clinicians, although it may have a significant impact on quality of life. For over half a century, traditional in-person PD cognitive assessment lacked accessibility, scalability, and specificity due to its inherent limitations. In this review, we propose that novel methods of online cognitive assessment could potentially address these limitations. We first outline the challenges of traditional in-person cognitive testing in PD. We then summarize the existing literature on online cognitive testing in PD. Finally, we explore the advantages, but also the limitations, of three major processes involved in online PD cognitive testing: recruitment and sampling methods, measurement and participation, and disease monitoring and management. Taking the limitations into account, we aim to highlight the potential of online cognitive testing as a more accessible and efficient approach to cognitive testing in PD.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Sharon Binoy
- Loyola Stritch School of Medicine, Maywood, IL, United States
- Center for Accessible Neuropsychology and Sagol School of Neuroscience, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
- Department of Occupational Therapy, Faculty of Medical & Health Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
| | - Avigail Lithwick Algon
- Center for Accessible Neuropsychology and Sagol School of Neuroscience, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
- Department of Occupational Therapy, Faculty of Medical & Health Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
| | - Yoad Ben Adiva
- Center for Accessible Neuropsychology and Sagol School of Neuroscience, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
- Department of Occupational Therapy, Faculty of Medical & Health Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
| | - Leila Montaser-Kouhsari
- Department of Neurology, Brigham and Women Hospital, Harvard University, Boston, MA, United States
| | - William Saban
- Center for Accessible Neuropsychology and Sagol School of Neuroscience, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
- Department of Occupational Therapy, Faculty of Medical & Health Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
| |
Collapse
|
7
|
Henrich J, Muthukrishna M. What Makes Us Smart? Top Cogn Sci 2024; 16:322-342. [PMID: 37086053 DOI: 10.1111/tops.12656] [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: 07/12/2022] [Revised: 04/04/2023] [Accepted: 04/05/2023] [Indexed: 04/23/2023]
Abstract
How did humans become clever enough to live in nearly every major ecosystem on earth, create vaccines against deadly plagues, explore the oceans depths, and routinely traverse the globe at 30,000 feet in aluminum tubes while nibbling on roasted almonds? Drawing on recent developments in our understanding of human evolution, we consider what makes us distinctively smarter than other animals. Contrary to conventional wisdom, human brilliance emerges not from our innate brainpower or raw computational capacities, but from the sharing of information in communities and networks over generations. We review how larger, more diverse, and more optimally interconnected networks of minds give rise to faster innovation and how the cognitive products of this cumulative cultural evolutionary process feedback to make us individually "smarter"-in the sense of being better at meeting the challenges and problems posed by our societies and socioecologies. Here, we consider not only how cultural evolution supplies us with "thinking tools" (like counting systems and fractions) but also how it has shaped our ontologies (e.g., do germs and witches exist?) and epistemologies, including our notions of what constitutes a "good reason" or "good evidence" (e.g., are dreams a source of evidence?). Building on this, we consider how cultural evolution has organized and distributed cultural knowledge and cognitive tasks among subpopulations, effectively shifting both thinking and production to the level of the community, population, or network, resulting in collective information processing and group decisions. Cultural evolution can turn mindless mobs into wise crowds by facilitating and constraining cognition through a wide variety of epistemic institutions-political, legal, and scientific. These institutions process information and aid better decision-making by suppressing or encouraging the use of different cultural epistemologies and ontologies.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Joseph Henrich
- Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University
| | - Michael Muthukrishna
- Department of Psychological and Behavioral Science, London School of Economics and Political Science
| |
Collapse
|
8
|
Torres C, Li W, Escudero P. Acoustic, phonetic, and phonological features of Drehu vowels. THE JOURNAL OF THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA 2024; 155:2612-2626. [PMID: 38629882 DOI: 10.1121/10.0025538] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/27/2023] [Accepted: 03/19/2024] [Indexed: 04/19/2024]
Abstract
This study presents an acoustic investigation of the vowel inventory of Drehu (Southern Oceanic Linkage), spoken in New Caledonia. Reportedly, Drehu has a 14 vowel system distinguishing seven vowel qualities and an additional length distinction. Previous phonological descriptions were based on impressionistic accounts showing divergent proposals for two out of seven reported vowel qualities. This study presents the first phonetic investigation of Drehu vowels based on acoustic data from eight speakers. To examine the phonetic correlates of the proposed phonological vowel inventory, multi-point acoustic analyses were used, and vowel inherent spectral change (VISC) was investigated (F1, F2, and F3). Additionally, vowel duration was measured. Contrary to reports from other studies on VISC in monophthongs, we find that monophthongs in Drehu are mostly steady state. We propose a revised vowel inventory and focus on the acoustic description of open-mid /ɛ/ and the central vowel /ə/, whose status was previously unclear. Additionally, we find that vowel quality stands orthogonal to vowel quantity by demonstrating that the phonological vowel length distinction is primarily based on a duration cue rather than formant structure. Finally, we report the acoustic properties of the seven vowel qualities that were identified.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Catalina Torres
- Department of Comparative Language Science, University of Zurich, Affolternstrasse 56, Zurich, 8050, Switzerland
- ISLE Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Language Evolution, University of Zurich, Affolternstrasse 56, Zurich, 8050, Switzerland
- ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language, The Australian National University, 110 Ellery Crescent, Acton ACT 2601, Australia
| | - Weicong Li
- ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language, The Australian National University, 110 Ellery Crescent, Acton ACT 2601, Australia
- MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Development, Western Sydney University, Sydney, New South Wales, 2145, Australia
| | - Paola Escudero
- ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language, The Australian National University, 110 Ellery Crescent, Acton ACT 2601, Australia
- MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Development, Western Sydney University, Sydney, New South Wales, 2145, Australia
| |
Collapse
|
9
|
Charlesworth TES, Ghate K, Caliskan A, Banaji MR. Extracting intersectional stereotypes from embeddings: Developing and validating the Flexible Intersectional Stereotype Extraction procedure. PNAS NEXUS 2024; 3:pgae089. [PMID: 38505691 PMCID: PMC10949907 DOI: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae089] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/16/2023] [Accepted: 02/13/2024] [Indexed: 03/21/2024]
Abstract
Social group-based identities intersect. The meaning of "woman" is modulated by adding social class as in "rich woman" or "poor woman." How does such intersectionality operate at-scale in everyday language? Which intersections dominate (are most frequent)? What qualities (positivity, competence, warmth) are ascribed to each intersection? In this study, we make it possible to address such questions by developing a stepwise procedure, Flexible Intersectional Stereotype Extraction (FISE), applied to word embeddings (GloVe; BERT) trained on billions of words of English Internet text, revealing insights into intersectional stereotypes. First, applying FISE to occupation stereotypes across intersections of gender, race, and class showed alignment with ground-truth data on occupation demographics, providing initial validation. Second, applying FISE to trait adjectives showed strong androcentrism (Men) and ethnocentrism (White) in dominating everyday English language (e.g. White + Men are associated with 59% of traits; Black + Women with 5%). Associated traits also revealed intersectional differences: advantaged intersectional groups, especially intersections involving Rich, had more common, positive, warm, competent, and dominant trait associates. Together, the empirical insights from FISE illustrate its utility for transparently and efficiently quantifying intersectional stereotypes in existing large text corpora, with potential to expand intersectionality research across unprecedented time and place. This project further sets up the infrastructure necessary to pursue new research on the emergent properties of intersectional identities.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
| | - Kshitish Ghate
- Language Technologies Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA
| | - Aylin Caliskan
- Information School, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98105, USA
| | - Mahzarin R Banaji
- Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
| |
Collapse
|
10
|
Couée I. The importance of worldwide linguistic and cultural diversity for climate change resilience. Ecol Lett 2024; 27:e14410. [PMID: 38519453 DOI: 10.1111/ele.14410] [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: 11/07/2023] [Revised: 01/22/2024] [Accepted: 03/06/2024] [Indexed: 03/25/2024]
Abstract
Local minority languages and dialects, through the local knowledge and expertise associated with them, can play major roles in analysing climate change and biodiversity loss, in facilitating community awareness of environmental crises and in setting up locally-adapted resilience and sustainability strategies. While the situation and contribution of Indigenous and Tribal Peoples are of emblematic importance, the issue of the relationships between cultural and linguistic diversity and environmental awareness and protection does not solely concern peripheral highly-specialized communities in specific ecosystems of the Global South, but constitutes a worldwide challenge, throughout all of the countries, whatever their geographical location, their economical development, or their political status. Environmental emergency and climate change resilience should therefore raise international awareness on the need to promote the survival and development of minority languages and dialects and to take into account their creativity and expertise in relation to the dynamics of their local environments.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Ivan Couée
- UMR 6553 Ecosystems-Biodiversity-Evolution, University of Rennes/CNRS, Rennes, France
| |
Collapse
|
11
|
Martin A, Adger D, Abels K, Kanampiu P, Culbertson J. A Universal Cognitive Bias in Word Order: Evidence From Speakers Whose Language Goes Against It. Psychol Sci 2024; 35:304-311. [PMID: 38386358 DOI: 10.1177/09567976231222836] [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] [Indexed: 02/23/2024] Open
Abstract
There is a long-standing debate in cognitive science surrounding the source of commonalities among languages of the world. Indeed, there are many potential explanations for such commonalities-accidents of history, common processes of language change, memory limitations, constraints on linguistic representations, and so on. Recent research has used psycholinguistic experiments to provide empirical evidence linking common linguistic patterns to specific features of human cognition, but these experiments tend to use English speakers, who in many cases have direct experience with the common patterns of interest. Here we highlight the importance of testing populations whose languages go against cross-linguistic trends. We investigate whether adult monolingual speakers of Kîîtharaka, which has an unusual way of ordering words, mirror the word-order preferences of English speakers. We find that they do, supporting the hypothesis that universal cognitive representations play a role in shaping word order.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Alexander Martin
- Center for Language and Cognition Groningen, University of Groningen
| | - David Adger
- Department of Linguistics, Queen Mary University of London
| | - Klaus Abels
- Department of Linguistics, University College London
| | - Patrick Kanampiu
- School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, The University of Edinburgh
| | - Jennifer Culbertson
- School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, The University of Edinburgh
| |
Collapse
|
12
|
Kim Y, Tjuka A. Cognitive Science From the Perspective of Linguistic Diversity. Cogn Sci 2024; 48:e13418. [PMID: 38407526 DOI: 10.1111/cogs.13418] [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: 10/11/2023] [Revised: 12/27/2023] [Accepted: 02/11/2024] [Indexed: 02/27/2024]
Abstract
This letter addresses two issues in language research that are important to cognitive science: the comparability of word meanings across languages and the neglect of an integrated approach to writing systems. The first issue challenges generativist claims by emphasizing the importance of comparability of data, drawing on typologists' findings about different languages. The second issue addresses the exclusion of diverse writing systems from linguistic investigation and argues for a more extensive study of their effects on language and cognition. We argue for a refocusing of cognitive science research on linguistic diversity in all modalities to develop the most robust understanding of language and its role in human cognition more broadly.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Yoolim Kim
- Department of Psychology, Cognitive & Linguistic Sciences Program, Wellesley College
| | - Annika Tjuka
- Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
| |
Collapse
|
13
|
Trott S. Can large language models help augment English psycholinguistic datasets? Behav Res Methods 2024:10.3758/s13428-024-02337-z. [PMID: 38261264 DOI: 10.3758/s13428-024-02337-z] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 01/05/2024] [Indexed: 01/24/2024]
Abstract
Research on language and cognition relies extensively on psycholinguistic datasets or "norms". These datasets contain judgments of lexical properties like concreteness and age of acquisition, and can be used to norm experimental stimuli, discover empirical relationships in the lexicon, and stress-test computational models. However, collecting human judgments at scale is both time-consuming and expensive. This issue of scale is compounded for multi-dimensional norms and those incorporating context. The current work asks whether large language models (LLMs) can be leveraged to augment the creation of large, psycholinguistic datasets in English. I use GPT-4 to collect multiple kinds of semantic judgments (e.g., word similarity, contextualized sensorimotor associations, iconicity) for English words and compare these judgments against the human "gold standard". For each dataset, I find that GPT-4's judgments are positively correlated with human judgments, in some cases rivaling or even exceeding the average inter-annotator agreement displayed by humans. I then identify several ways in which LLM-generated norms differ from human-generated norms systematically. I also perform several "substitution analyses", which demonstrate that replacing human-generated norms with LLM-generated norms in a statistical model does not change the sign of parameter estimates (though in select cases, there are significant changes to their magnitude). I conclude by discussing the considerations and limitations associated with LLM-generated norms in general, including concerns of data contamination, the choice of LLM, external validity, construct validity, and data quality. Additionally, all of GPT-4's judgments (over 30,000 in total) are made available online for further analysis.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Sean Trott
- Department of Cognitive Science, UC San Diego, 9500 Gilman Dr., La Jolla, CA, 92093-0515, USA.
| |
Collapse
|
14
|
Binoy S, Montaser-Kouhsari L, Ponger P, Saban W. Remote assessment of cognition in Parkinson's disease and Cerebellar Ataxia: the MoCA test in English and Hebrew. Front Hum Neurosci 2024; 17:1325215. [PMID: 38259338 PMCID: PMC10800372 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2023.1325215] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/20/2023] [Accepted: 12/06/2023] [Indexed: 01/24/2024] Open
Abstract
There is a critical need for accessible neuropsychological testing for basic research and translational studies worldwide. Traditional in-person neuropsychological studies are inherently difficult to conduct because testing requires the recruitment and participation of individuals with neurological conditions. Consequently, studies are often based on small sample sizes, are highly time-consuming, and lack diversity. To address these challenges, in the last decade, the utilization of remote testing platforms has demonstrated promising results regarding the feasibility and efficiency of collecting patient data online. Herein, we tested the validity and generalizability of remote administration of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) test. We administered the MoCA to English and Hebrew speakers from three different populations: Parkinson's disease, Cerebellar Ataxia, and healthy controls via video conferencing. First, we found that the online MoCA scores do not differ from traditional in-person studies, demonstrating convergent validity. Second, the MoCA scores of both our online patient groups were lower than controls, demonstrating construct validity. Third, we did not find differences between the two language versions of the remote MoCA, supporting its generalizability to different languages and the efficiency of collecting binational data (USA and Israel). Given these results, future studies can utilize the remote MoCA, and potentially other remote neuropsychological tests to collect data more efficiently across multiple different patient populations, language versions, and nations.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Sharon Binoy
- Center for Accessible Neuropsychology and Sagol School of Neuroscience, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel
- Department of Occupational Therapy, Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel
- Loyola Stritch School of Medicine, Chicago, IL, United States
| | - Leila Montaser-Kouhsari
- Department of Neurology and Neurological Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, United States
| | - Penina Ponger
- Movement Disorders Division, Department of Neurology, Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel
| | - William Saban
- Center for Accessible Neuropsychology and Sagol School of Neuroscience, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel
- Department of Occupational Therapy, Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel
| |
Collapse
|
15
|
Erben Johansson N. Prominence effects in vocal iconicity: Implications for lexical access and language changea). THE JOURNAL OF THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA 2024; 155:8-17. [PMID: 38169522 DOI: 10.1121/10.0024240] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/15/2023] [Accepted: 12/13/2023] [Indexed: 01/05/2024]
Abstract
This paper explores how three cognitive and perceptual cues, vocal iconicity, resemblance-based mappings between form and meaning, and segment position and lexical stress, interact to affect word formation and language processing. The study combines an analysis of the word-internal positions that iconic segments occur in based on data from 245 language families with an experimental study in which participants representing more than 30 languages rated iconic and non-iconic pseudowords. The pseudowords were designed to systematically vary segment and stress placement across syllables. The results for study 1 indicate that segments used iconically appear approximately 0.26 segment positions closer toward the beginning of words compared to non-iconic segments. In study 2, it was found that iconic segments occurring in stressed syllables and non-iconic segments occurring in the second syllable were rated as significantly more fitting. These findings suggest that the interplay between vocal iconicity and prominence effects increases the predictive function of iconic segments by foregrounding sounds, which intrinsically carry semantic information. Consequently, these results contribute to the understanding of the widespread occurrence of vocal iconicity in human languages.
Collapse
|
16
|
Benítez-Burraco A, Ivanova O. Language in healthy and pathological ageing: Methodological milestones and challenges. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE & COMMUNICATION DISORDERS 2024; 59:4-12. [PMID: 38149881 DOI: 10.1111/1460-6984.13003] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/28/2023]
Affiliation(s)
- Antonio Benítez-Burraco
- Department of Spanish, Linguistics and Theory of Literature (Linguistics), Faculty of Philology, University of Seville, Sevilla, Spain
| | - Olga Ivanova
- Spanish Language Department, Faculty of Philology, University of Salamanca/Institute of Neuroscience of Castilla y León (INCYL), Salamanca, Spain
| |
Collapse
|
17
|
Blockmans L, Kievit R, Wouters J, Ghesquière P, Vandermosten M. Dynamics of cognitive predictors during reading acquisition in a sample of children overrepresented for dyslexia risk. Dev Sci 2024; 27:e13412. [PMID: 37219071 DOI: 10.1111/desc.13412] [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: 06/24/2022] [Revised: 04/07/2023] [Accepted: 05/09/2023] [Indexed: 05/24/2023]
Abstract
Literacy acquisition is a complex process with genetic and environmental factors influencing cognitive and neural processes associated with reading. Previous research identified factors that predict word reading fluency (WRF), including phonological awareness (PA), rapid automatized naming (RAN), and speech-in-noise perception (SPIN). Recent theoretical accounts suggest dynamic interactions between these factors and reading, but direct investigations of such dynamics are lacking. Here, we investigated the dynamic effect of phonological processing and speech perception on WRF. More specifically, we evaluated the dynamic influence of PA, RAN, and SPIN measured in kindergarten (the year prior to formal reading instruction), first grade (the first year of formal reading instruction) and second grade on WRF in second and third grade. We also assessed the effect of an indirect proxy of family risk for reading difficulties using a parental questionnaire (Adult Reading History Questionnaire, ARHQ). We applied path modeling in a longitudinal sample of 162 Dutch-speaking children of whom the majority was selected to have an increased family and/or cognitive risk for dyslexia. We showed that parental ARHQ had a significant effect on WRF, RAN and SPIN, but unexpectedly not on PA. We also found effects of RAN and PA directly on WRF that were limited to first and second grade respectively, in contrast to previous research reporting pre-reading PA effects and prolonged RAN effects throughout reading acquisition. Our study provides important new insights into early prediction of later word reading abilities and into the optimal time window to target a specific reading-related subskill during intervention.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Lauren Blockmans
- Research Group ExpORL, Department of Neuroscience, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
| | - Rogier Kievit
- Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behavior, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
| | - Jan Wouters
- Research Group ExpORL, Department of Neuroscience, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
| | - Pol Ghesquière
- Parenting and Special Education Research Unit, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
| | - Maaike Vandermosten
- Research Group ExpORL, Department of Neuroscience, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
| |
Collapse
|
18
|
García AM, de Leon J, Tee BL, Blasi DE, Gorno-Tempini ML. Speech and language markers of neurodegeneration: a call for global equity. Brain 2023; 146:4870-4879. [PMID: 37497623 PMCID: PMC10690018 DOI: 10.1093/brain/awad253] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/04/2023] [Revised: 06/29/2023] [Accepted: 07/15/2023] [Indexed: 07/28/2023] Open
Abstract
In the field of neurodegeneration, speech and language assessments are useful for diagnosing aphasic syndromes and for characterizing other disorders. As a complement to classic tests, scalable and low-cost digital tools can capture relevant anomalies automatically, potentially supporting the quest for globally equitable markers of brain health. However, this promise remains unfulfilled due to limited linguistic diversity in scientific works and clinical instruments. Here we argue for cross-linguistic research as a core strategy to counter this problem. First, we survey the contributions of linguistic assessments in the study of primary progressive aphasia and the three most prevalent neurodegenerative disorders worldwide-Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia. Second, we address two forms of linguistic unfairness in the literature: the neglect of most of the world's 7000 languages and the preponderance of English-speaking cohorts. Third, we review studies showing that linguistic dysfunctions in a given disorder may vary depending on the patient's language and that English speakers offer a suboptimal benchmark for other language groups. Finally, we highlight different approaches, tools and initiatives for cross-linguistic research, identifying core challenges for their deployment. Overall, we seek to inspire timely actions to counter a looming source of inequity in behavioural neurology.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Adolfo M García
- Global Brain Health Institute, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94143, USA
- Cognitive Neuroscience Center, Universidad de San Andrés, Buenos Aires B1644BID, Argentina
- Departamento de Lingüística y Literatura, Facultad de Humanidades, Universidad de Santiago de Chile, Santiago 9160000, Chile
- Latin American Brain Health (BrainLat) Institute, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Avenida Diagonal Las Torres 2640 (7941169), Santiago, Peñalolén, Región Metropolitana, Chile
| | - Jessica de Leon
- Memory and Aging Center, Department of Neurology, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94143, USA
| | - Boon Lead Tee
- Global Brain Health Institute, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94143, USA
- Memory and Aging Center, Department of Neurology, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94143, USA
| | - Damián E Blasi
- Data Science Initiative, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
- Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
- Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena 07745, Germany
| | - Maria Luisa Gorno-Tempini
- Memory and Aging Center, Department of Neurology, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94143, USA
| |
Collapse
|
19
|
Linders GM, Louwerse MM. Lingualyzer: A computational linguistic tool for multilingual and multidimensional text analysis. Behav Res Methods 2023:10.3758/s13428-023-02284-1. [PMID: 38030922 DOI: 10.3758/s13428-023-02284-1] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 10/30/2023] [Indexed: 12/01/2023]
Abstract
Most natural language models and tools are restricted to one language, typically English. For researchers in the behavioral sciences investigating languages other than English, and for those researchers who would like to make cross-linguistic comparisons, hardly any computational linguistic tools exist, particularly none for those researchers who lack deep computational linguistic knowledge or programming skills. Yet, for interdisciplinary researchers in a variety of fields, ranging from psycholinguistics, social psychology, cognitive psychology, education, to literary studies, there certainly is a need for such a cross-linguistic tool. In the current paper, we present Lingualyzer ( https://lingualyzer.com ), an easily accessible tool that analyzes text at three different text levels (sentence, paragraph, document), which includes 351 multidimensional linguistic measures that are available in 41 different languages. This paper gives an overview of Lingualyzer, categorizes its hundreds of measures, demonstrates how it distinguishes itself from other text quantification tools, explains how it can be used, and provides validations. Lingualyzer is freely accessible for scientific purposes using an intuitive and easy-to-use interface.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Guido M Linders
- Department of Cognitive Science & Artificial Intelligence, Tilburg University, Tilburg, Netherlands.
- Department of Comparative Language Science, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
| | - Max M Louwerse
- Department of Cognitive Science & Artificial Intelligence, Tilburg University, Tilburg, Netherlands
| |
Collapse
|
20
|
Blum F, Barrientos C, Ingunza A, Blasi DE, Zariquiey R. Grammars Across Time Analyzed (GATA): a dataset of 52 languages. Sci Data 2023; 10:835. [PMID: 38017079 PMCID: PMC10684564 DOI: 10.1038/s41597-023-02659-1] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/14/2023] [Accepted: 10/18/2023] [Indexed: 11/30/2023] Open
Abstract
Grammars Across Time Analyzed (GATA) is a resource capturing two snapshots of the grammatical structure of a diverse range of languages separated in time, aimed at furthering research on historical linguistics, language evolution, and cultural change. GATA comprises grammatical information on 52 diverse languages across all continents, featuring morphological, syntactic, and phonological information based on published grammars of the same language at two different time points. Here we introduce the coding scheme and design features of GATA, and we describe some salient patterns related to language change and the coverage of grammatical descriptions over time.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Frederic Blum
- Department for Linguistic and Cultural Evolution, Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Carlos Barrientos
- Department for Linguistic and Cultural Evolution, Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
- Institut für Linguistik, Universität Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany
| | | | - Damián E Blasi
- Department for Linguistic and Cultural Evolution, Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.
- Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, USA.
- Harvard Data Science Initiative, Harvard University, Cambridge, USA.
- Center for Brain and Cognition, Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona, Spain.
- Catalan Institute for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA), Barcelona, Spain.
| | | |
Collapse
|
21
|
Alzahrani A. LexArabic: A receptive vocabulary size test to estimate Arabic proficiency. Behav Res Methods 2023:10.3758/s13428-023-02286-z. [PMID: 37964176 DOI: 10.3758/s13428-023-02286-z] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 11/01/2023] [Indexed: 11/16/2023]
Abstract
Arabic is understudied in second-language research (L2) and lacks rapid and adequate tools for measuring proficiency. Drawing inspiration from LexTALE and its extensions, this study created and validated a quick receptive vocabulary size test to estimate L2 Arabic proficiency. In Experiment 1, the initial version of LexArabic was designed and evaluated with 192 L1 and L2 speakers. Item analysis using point-biserial correlations and item response theory (IRT) was conducted to refine the test, resulting in a final version with 90 items (60 words, 30 nonwords). Experiment 2 assessed LexArabic reliability, validity, and accuracy using a new group of 260 L1 and L2 speakers. The validity of LexArabic was evaluated through objective tasks (a general Arabic proficiency test, L1 to L2 translation task, L2 to L1 translation task) as well as subjective tasks (self-rated proficiency). Results showed that LexArabic demonstrated good reliability (α > 90), validity (correlation with two objective tasks and one subjective task), as well as accuracy (AUC value = .88). The introduction of LexArabic has the potential to facilitate experimental research on both L1 and L2 Arabic speakers and contributes to the development of standardized L2 proficiency assessment across languages.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Alaa Alzahrani
- Department of English, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
| |
Collapse
|
22
|
Kauf C, Ivanova AA, Rambelli G, Chersoni E, She JS, Chowdhury Z, Fedorenko E, Lenci A. Event Knowledge in Large Language Models: The Gap Between the Impossible and the Unlikely. Cogn Sci 2023; 47:e13386. [PMID: 38009752 DOI: 10.1111/cogs.13386] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/07/2022] [Revised: 10/27/2023] [Accepted: 11/04/2023] [Indexed: 11/29/2023]
Abstract
Word co-occurrence patterns in language corpora contain a surprising amount of conceptual knowledge. Large language models (LLMs), trained to predict words in context, leverage these patterns to achieve impressive performance on diverse semantic tasks requiring world knowledge. An important but understudied question about LLMs' semantic abilities is whether they acquire generalized knowledge of common events. Here, we test whether five pretrained LLMs (from 2018's BERT to 2023's MPT) assign a higher likelihood to plausible descriptions of agent-patient interactions than to minimally different implausible versions of the same event. Using three curated sets of minimal sentence pairs (total n = 1215), we found that pretrained LLMs possess substantial event knowledge, outperforming other distributional language models. In particular, they almost always assign a higher likelihood to possible versus impossible events (The teacher bought the laptop vs. The laptop bought the teacher). However, LLMs show less consistent preferences for likely versus unlikely events (The nanny tutored the boy vs. The boy tutored the nanny). In follow-up analyses, we show that (i) LLM scores are driven by both plausibility and surface-level sentence features, (ii) LLM scores generalize well across syntactic variants (active vs. passive constructions) but less well across semantic variants (synonymous sentences), (iii) some LLM errors mirror human judgment ambiguity, and (iv) sentence plausibility serves as an organizing dimension in internal LLM representations. Overall, our results show that important aspects of event knowledge naturally emerge from distributional linguistic patterns, but also highlight a gap between representations of possible/impossible and likely/unlikely events.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Carina Kauf
- Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
| | - Anna A Ivanova
- Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
| | - Giulia Rambelli
- Department of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures, University of Bologna
| | - Emmanuele Chersoni
- Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, Hong Kong Polytechnic University
| | - Jingyuan Selena She
- Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
| | | | - Evelina Fedorenko
- Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
| | - Alessandro Lenci
- Department of Philology, Literature, and Linguistics, University of Pisa
| |
Collapse
|
23
|
Cox C, Dideriksen C, Keren-Portnoy T, Roepstorff A, Christiansen MH, Fusaroli R. Infant-directed speech does not always involve exaggerated vowel distinctions: Evidence from Danish. Child Dev 2023; 94:1672-1696. [PMID: 37307398 DOI: 10.1111/cdev.13950] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/18/2022] [Revised: 03/10/2023] [Accepted: 04/11/2023] [Indexed: 06/14/2023]
Abstract
This study compared the acoustic properties of 26 (100% female, 100% monolingual) Danish caregivers' spontaneous speech addressed to their 11- to 24-month-old infants (infant-directed speech, IDS) and an adult experimenter (adult-directed speech, ADS). The data were collected between 2016 and 2018 in Aarhus, Denmark. Prosodic properties of Danish IDS conformed to cross-linguistic patterns, with a higher pitch, greater pitch variability, and slower articulation rate than ADS. However, an acoustic analysis of vocalic properties revealed that Danish IDS had a reduced or similar vowel space, higher within-vowel variability, raised formants, and lower degree of vowel discriminability compared to ADS. None of the measures, except articulation rate, showed age-related differences. These results push for future research to conduct theory-driven comparisons across languages with distinct phonological systems.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Christopher Cox
- School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
- Interacting Minds Centre, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
- Department of Language and Linguistic Science, University of York, Vanbrugh College, York, UK
| | - Christina Dideriksen
- School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
- Interacting Minds Centre, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
| | - Tamar Keren-Portnoy
- Department of Language and Linguistic Science, University of York, Vanbrugh College, York, UK
| | - Andreas Roepstorff
- School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
- Interacting Minds Centre, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
| | - Morten H Christiansen
- School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
- Interacting Minds Centre, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
- Department of Psychology, Cornell University, New York, Ithaca, USA
| | - Riccardo Fusaroli
- School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
- Interacting Minds Centre, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
- Linguistic Data Consortium, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA
| |
Collapse
|
24
|
Hatahet O, Roser F, Seghier ML. Cognitive decline assessment in speakers of understudied languages. ALZHEIMER'S & DEMENTIA (NEW YORK, N. Y.) 2023; 9:e12432. [PMID: 37942084 PMCID: PMC10629372 DOI: 10.1002/trc2.12432] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/17/2023] [Revised: 08/20/2023] [Accepted: 10/03/2023] [Indexed: 11/10/2023]
Abstract
Projected trends in population aging have forecasted a massive increase in the number of people with dementia, in particular in sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Cognitive decline is a significant marker for dementia, typically assessed with standardized neuropsychological tools that have been validated in some well-researched languages such as English. However, with the existing language diversity, current tools cannot cater to speakers of understudied languages, putting these populations at a disadvantage when it comes to access to early and accurate diagnosis of dementia. Here, we shed light on the detrimental impact of this language gap in the context of the MENA region, highlighting inadequate tools and an unacceptable lack of expertise for a MENA population of a half billion people. Our perspective calls for more research to unravel the exact impact of the language gap on the quality of cognitive decline assessment in speakers of understudied languages. Highlights Cognitive decline is a marker for dementia, assessed with neuropsychological tests.There is a lack of culturally valid tests for speakers of understudied languages.For example, suboptimal cognitive tests are used in the Middle East and North Africa region.Linguistic diversity should be considered in the development of cognitive tests.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Oula Hatahet
- Department of Biomedical EngineeringKhalifa University of Science and TechnologyAbu DhabiUnited Arab Emirates
| | - Florian Roser
- Neurological InstituteCleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi, Al Maryah IslandAbu DhabiUnited Arab Emirates
| | - Mohamed L. Seghier
- Department of Biomedical EngineeringKhalifa University of Science and TechnologyAbu DhabiUnited Arab Emirates
- Healthcare Engineering Innovation Center (HEIC)Khalifa University of Science and TechnologyAbu DhabiUnited Arab Emirates
| |
Collapse
|
25
|
Kemmerer D. Grounded Cognition Entails Linguistic Relativity: Response to Commentators. Top Cogn Sci 2023; 15:698-708. [PMID: 37534415 DOI: 10.1111/tops.12687] [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: 05/31/2023] [Revised: 07/07/2023] [Accepted: 07/25/2023] [Indexed: 08/04/2023]
Abstract
In this paper, I respond to eight commentaries on my target article called "Grounded cognition entails linguistic relativity: A neglected implication of a major semantic theory." The commentaries span a broad range of disciplines and perspectives. I have organized my response around the following topics: (1) an introductory synopsis of my main argument; (2) grounded versus amodal theories of concepts; (3) language-specific versus language-independent concepts; (4) language, culture, and cognition; (5) language itself as a source of conceptual grounding; (6) abstract concepts, linguistic relativity, and contextual and individual variability; (7) word meanings as language-specific predictions; and (8) some final remarks about the importance of cross-linguistic diversity.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- David Kemmerer
- Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, Department of Psychological Sciences, Purdue University
| |
Collapse
|
26
|
Wolfer S. Is More Always Better? Testing the Addition Bias for German Language Statistics. Cogn Sci 2023; 47:e13339. [PMID: 37705294 DOI: 10.1111/cogs.13339] [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: 05/17/2023] [Revised: 08/15/2023] [Accepted: 08/26/2023] [Indexed: 09/15/2023]
Abstract
This replication study aims to investigate a potential bias toward addition in the German language, building upon previous findings of Winter and colleagues who identified a similar bias in English. Our results confirm a bias in word frequencies and binomial expressions, aligning with these previous findings. However, the analysis of distributional semantics based on word vectors did not yield consistent results for German. Furthermore, our study emphasizes the crucial role of selecting appropriate translational equivalents, highlighting the significance of considering language-specific factors when testing for such biases for languages other than English.
Collapse
|
27
|
Shepard GH, Daly L. Sensory Ecology, Bioeconomy, and the Age of COVID: A Parallax View of Indigenous and Scientific Knowledge. Top Cogn Sci 2023. [PMID: 37440457 DOI: 10.1111/tops.12666] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/29/2022] [Revised: 04/19/2023] [Accepted: 04/23/2023] [Indexed: 07/15/2023]
Abstract
Drawing on original ethnobotanical and anthropological research among Indigenous peoples across the Amazon, we examine synergies and dissonances between Indigenous and Western scientific knowledge about the environment, resource use, and sustainability. By focusing on the sensory dimension of Indigenous engagements with the environment-an approach we have described as "sensory ecology" and explored through the method of "phytoethnography"-we promote a symmetrical dialogue between Indigenous and scientific understandings around such phenomena as animal-plant mutualisms, phytochemical toxicity, sustainable forest management in "multinatural" landscapes, and the emergence of new diseases like the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19). Drawing examples from our own and other published works, we explore the possibilities and limitations of a "parallax view" attempting to hold Indigenous and scientific knowledge in focus simultaneously. As the concept of "bioeconomy" emerges as a key alternative for sustainable development of the Amazon, we encourage a critical and urgent engagement between dominant Western conceptions and Indigenous Amazonian knowledge, practices, and cultural values. Cognitive science, which has long contributed to studies of Indigenous categorization and conceptualization of the natural world, continues to play an important role in building bridges of mutual communication and respect between Indigenous and scientific approaches to sustainability and biodiversity conservation.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
| | - Lewis Daly
- Department of Anthropology, University College London
| |
Collapse
|
28
|
Malt BC, Majid A. Conceptual Foundations of Sustainability. Top Cogn Sci 2023. [PMID: 37384912 DOI: 10.1111/tops.12678] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/06/2023] [Revised: 06/12/2023] [Accepted: 06/12/2023] [Indexed: 07/01/2023]
Abstract
Threats to the health of our environment are numerous. Much research in science and engineering is devoted to documenting, understanding, and attempting to mitigate the harm itself. The root challenge for sustainability, however, is human behavior. As such, changes to human behaviors and the internal processes that drive them are also essential. Critical to understanding sustainability-related behaviors is the individual's conceptualization of the natural world and its components and processes. The papers in this topiCS issue address these conceptualizations by drawing from anthropological, linguistic, educational, philosophical, and social cognitive perspectives as well as traditional psychological approaches to the study of concepts and their development in children. They engage with many domains bearing on environmental sustainability including climate change, biodiversity, land and water conservation, resource use, and design of the built environment. They coalesce around four broad themes: (a) What people know (or believe) about nature broadly and about specific aspects of nature, and how they acquire and use this knowledge; (b) how knowledge is expressed and shared via language; (c) how knowledge and beliefs interact with affective, social, and motivational influences to yield attitudes and behaviors; and (d) how members of different cultures and speakers of different languages differ in these ways. The papers also point to lessons for advancing sustainability via public policy and public messaging, education, conservation and nature management, and design of the built environment.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
| | - Asifa Majid
- Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford
- Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University
| |
Collapse
|
29
|
Isasi-Isasmendi A, Andrews C, Flecken M, Laka I, Daum MM, Meyer M, Bickel B, Sauppe S. The Agent Preference in Visual Event Apprehension. Open Mind (Camb) 2023; 7:240-282. [PMID: 37416075 PMCID: PMC10320828 DOI: 10.1162/opmi_a_00083] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/01/2023] [Accepted: 03/19/2023] [Indexed: 07/08/2023] Open
Abstract
A central aspect of human experience and communication is understanding events in terms of agent ("doer") and patient ("undergoer" of action) roles. These event roles are rooted in general cognition and prominently encoded in language, with agents appearing as more salient and preferred over patients. An unresolved question is whether this preference for agents already operates during apprehension, that is, the earliest stage of event processing, and if so, whether the effect persists across different animacy configurations and task demands. Here we contrast event apprehension in two tasks and two languages that encode agents differently; Basque, a language that explicitly case-marks agents ('ergative'), and Spanish, which does not mark agents. In two brief exposure experiments, native Basque and Spanish speakers saw pictures for only 300 ms, and subsequently described them or answered probe questions about them. We compared eye fixations and behavioral correlates of event role extraction with Bayesian regression. Agents received more attention and were recognized better across languages and tasks. At the same time, language and task demands affected the attention to agents. Our findings show that a general preference for agents exists in event apprehension, but it can be modulated by task and language demands.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Arrate Isasi-Isasmendi
- Department of Comparative Language Science, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
- Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Language Evolution (ISLE), University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
| | - Caroline Andrews
- Department of Comparative Language Science, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
- Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Language Evolution (ISLE), University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
| | - Monique Flecken
- Department of Linguistics, Amsterdam Centre for Language and Communication, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
| | - Itziar Laka
- Department of Linguistics and Basque Studies, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Leioa, Spain
| | - Moritz M. Daum
- Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Language Evolution (ISLE), University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
- Department of Psychology, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
- Jacobs Center for Productive Youth Development, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
| | - Martin Meyer
- Department of Comparative Language Science, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
- Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Language Evolution (ISLE), University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
- Cognitive Psychology Unit, University of Klagenfurt, Klagenfurt, Austria
| | - Balthasar Bickel
- Department of Comparative Language Science, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
- Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Language Evolution (ISLE), University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
| | - Sebastian Sauppe
- Department of Comparative Language Science, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
- Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Language Evolution (ISLE), University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
| |
Collapse
|
30
|
Liu J, Hilton CB, Bergelson E, Mehr SA. Language experience predicts music processing in a half-million speakers of fifty-four languages. Curr Biol 2023; 33:1916-1925.e4. [PMID: 37105166 PMCID: PMC10306420 DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2023.03.067] [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: 10/18/2021] [Revised: 02/08/2023] [Accepted: 03/23/2023] [Indexed: 04/29/2023]
Abstract
Tonal languages differ from other languages in their use of pitch (tones) to distinguish words. Lifelong experience speaking and hearing tonal languages has been argued to shape auditory processing in ways that generalize beyond the perception of linguistic pitch to the perception of pitch in other domains like music. We conducted a meta-analysis of prior studies testing this idea, finding moderate evidence supporting it. But prior studies were limited by mostly small sample sizes representing a small number of languages and countries, making it challenging to disentangle the effects of linguistic experience from variability in music training, cultural differences, and other potential confounds. To address these issues, we used web-based citizen science to assess music perception skill on a global scale in 34,034 native speakers of 19 tonal languages (e.g., Mandarin, Yoruba). We compared their performance to 459,066 native speakers of other languages, including 6 pitch-accented (e.g., Japanese) and 29 non-tonal languages (e.g., Hungarian). Whether or not participants had taken music lessons, native speakers of all 19 tonal languages had an improved ability to discriminate musical melodies on average, relative to speakers of non-tonal languages. But this improvement came with a trade-off: tonal language speakers were also worse at processing the musical beat. The results, which held across native speakers of many diverse languages and were robust to geographic and demographic variation, demonstrate that linguistic experience shapes music perception, with implications for relations between music, language, and culture in the human mind.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Jingxuan Liu
- Columbia Business School, Columbia University, 665 W 130th Street, New York, NY 10027, USA; Department of Psychology & Neuroscience, Duke University, 417 Chapel Drive, Durham, NC 27708, USA.
| | - Courtney B Hilton
- Yale Child Study Center, Yale University, 300 George Street #900, New Haven, CT 06511, USA; School of Psychology, University of Auckland, 23 Symonds Street, Auckland 1010, New Zealand.
| | - Elika Bergelson
- Department of Psychology & Neuroscience, Duke University, 417 Chapel Drive, Durham, NC 27708, USA
| | - Samuel A Mehr
- Yale Child Study Center, Yale University, 300 George Street #900, New Haven, CT 06511, USA; School of Psychology, University of Auckland, 23 Symonds Street, Auckland 1010, New Zealand.
| |
Collapse
|
31
|
Atari M, Mehl MR, Graham J, Doris JM, Schwarz N, Davani AM, Omrani A, Kennedy B, Gonzalez E, Jafarzadeh N, Hussain A, Mirinjian A, Madden A, Bhatia R, Burch A, Harlan A, Sbarra DA, Raison CL, Moseley SA, Polsinelli AJ, Dehghani M. The paucity of morality in everyday talk. Sci Rep 2023; 13:5967. [PMID: 37045974 PMCID: PMC10097712 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-32711-4] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/07/2022] [Accepted: 03/30/2023] [Indexed: 04/14/2023] Open
Abstract
Given its centrality in scholarly and popular discourse, morality should be expected to figure prominently in everyday talk. We test this expectation by examining the frequency of moral content in three contexts, using three methods: (a) Participants' subjective frequency estimates (N = 581); (b) Human content analysis of unobtrusively recorded in-person interactions (N = 542 participants; n = 50,961 observations); and (c) Computational content analysis of Facebook posts (N = 3822 participants; n = 111,886 observations). In their self-reports, participants estimated that 21.5% of their interactions touched on morality (Study 1), but objectively, only 4.7% of recorded conversational samples (Study 2) and 2.2% of Facebook posts (Study 3) contained moral content. Collectively, these findings suggest that morality may be far less prominent in everyday life than scholarly and popular discourse, and laypeople, presume.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Mohammad Atari
- Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA.
- Brain and Creativity Institute, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA.
- Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, 11 Divinity Ave, Cambridge, MA, 02138, USA.
| | - Matthias R Mehl
- Department of Psychology, University of Arizona, Tucson, USA
| | - Jesse Graham
- Department of Management, David Eccles School of Business, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, USA
| | - John M Doris
- Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, Johnson College of Business, Cornell University, Ithaca, USA
- Sage School of Philosophy, Cornell University, Ithaca, USA
| | - Norbert Schwarz
- Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA
- Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA
| | - Aida Mostafazadeh Davani
- Department of Computer Science, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA
- Brain and Creativity Institute, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA
| | - Ali Omrani
- Department of Computer Science, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA
- Brain and Creativity Institute, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA
| | - Brendan Kennedy
- Department of Computer Science, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA
- Brain and Creativity Institute, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA
| | - Elaine Gonzalez
- Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA
| | - Nikki Jafarzadeh
- Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA
| | - Alyzeh Hussain
- Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA
| | - Arineh Mirinjian
- Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA
| | - Annabelle Madden
- Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA
| | - Rhea Bhatia
- Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA
| | - Alexander Burch
- Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA
| | - Allison Harlan
- Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA
| | - David A Sbarra
- Department of Psychology, University of Arizona, Tucson, USA
| | - Charles L Raison
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, USA
| | | | | | - Morteza Dehghani
- Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA
- Department of Computer Science, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA
- Brain and Creativity Institute, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA
| |
Collapse
|
32
|
Hallsworth M. A manifesto for applying behavioural science. Nat Hum Behav 2023; 7:310-322. [PMID: 36941468 DOI: 10.1038/s41562-023-01555-3] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/26/2022] [Accepted: 02/10/2023] [Indexed: 03/23/2023]
Abstract
Recent years have seen a rapid increase in the use of behavioural science to address the priorities of public and private sector actors. There is now a vibrant ecosystem of practitioners, teams and academics building on each other's findings across the globe. Their focus on robust evaluation means we know that this work has had an impact on important issues such as antimicrobial resistance, educational attainment and climate change. However, several critiques have also emerged; taken together, they suggest that applied behavioural science needs to evolve further over its next decade. This manifesto for the future of applied behavioural science looks at the challenges facing the field and sets out ten proposals to address them. Meeting these challenges will mean that behavioural science is better equipped to help to build policies, products and services on stronger empirical foundations-and thereby address the world's crucial challenges.
Collapse
|
33
|
Atari M, Henrich J. Historical Psychology. CURRENT DIRECTIONS IN PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE 2023. [DOI: 10.1177/09637214221149737] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 03/14/2023]
Abstract
A growing body of evidence suggests that many aspects of psychology have evolved culturally over historical time. A combination of approaches, including experimental data collected over the past 75 years, cross-cultural comparisons, and studies of immigrants, points to systematic changes in psychological domains as diverse as conformity, attention, emotion, morality, and olfaction. However, these approaches can go back in time only for a few decades and typically fail to provide continuous measures of cultural change, posing a challenge for testing deeper historical psychological processes. To tackle this challenge most directly, computational methods emerging from natural language processing can be adapted to extract psychological information from large-scale historical corpora. Here, we first review the benefits of psychology as a historical science and then present three useful classes of text-analytic techniques for historical psychological inquiry: dictionary-based methods, distributed-representational methods, and human-annotation-based methods. These represent an excellent suite of methodologies that can be used to examine the record of “dead minds.” Finally, we discuss the importance of going beyond English-centric text analysis in historical psychology to foster a more generalizable and inclusive science of human behavior. We propose that historical psychology should incorporate and further develop a variety of text-analytic approaches to reliably quantify the historical processes that gave rise to contemporary social, political, and psychological phenomena.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Mohammad Atari
- Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University
| | - Joseph Henrich
- Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University
| |
Collapse
|
34
|
Reading/writing direction as a source of directional bias in spatial cognition: Possible mechanisms and scope. Psychon Bull Rev 2023:10.3758/s13423-022-02239-1. [PMID: 36604373 DOI: 10.3758/s13423-022-02239-1] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 12/14/2022] [Indexed: 01/07/2023]
Abstract
Becoming literate has been argued to have a range of social, economic and psychological effects. Less examined is the extent to which repercussions of becoming literate may vary as a function of writing system variation. A salient way in which writing systems differ is in their directionality. Recent studies have claimed that directional biases in a variety of spatial domains are attributable to reading and writing direction. This claim is the focus of the present paper, which considers the scope and possible mechanisms underlying script directionality effects in spatial cognition, with particular attention to domains with real-world relevance. Three questions are addressed: (1) What are possible mediating and moderator variables relevant to script directionality effects in spatial cognition? (2) Does script directionality exert a fixed or a malleable effect? and (3) How can script directionality effects be appropriately tested? After discussing these questions in the context of specific studies, we highlight general methodological issues in this literature and provide recommendations for the design of future research.
Collapse
|
35
|
Long B, Simson J, Buxó-Lugo A, Watson DG, Mehr SA. How games can make behavioural science better. Nature 2023; 613:433-436. [PMID: 36650244 DOI: 10.1038/d41586-023-00065-6] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/19/2023]
|
36
|
Costa Porfírio JC, Corrêa Varella MA. Testing the cognitive niche hypothesis with structural equation modeling: different dark traits predict an evening-chronotype in males and females. CURRENT PSYCHOLOGY 2022. [DOI: 10.1007/s12144-022-04111-w] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/24/2022]
|