-
12Modeling Magnitude Discrimination: Effects of Internal Precision and Attentional Weighting of Feature DimensionsCognitive Science 48 (2). 2024.Given a rich environment, how do we decide on what information to use? A view of a single entity (e.g., a group of birds) affords many distinct interpretations, including their number, average size, and spatial extent. An enduring challenge for cognition, therefore, is to focus resources on the most relevant evidence for any particular decision. In the present study, subjects completed three tasks—number discrimination, surface area discrimination, and convex hull discrimination—with the same st…Read more
-
40The mental representation of universal quantifiersLinguistics and Philosophy 45 (4): 911-941. 2022.A sentence like every circle is blue might be understood in terms of individuals and their properties or in terms of a relation between groups. Relatedly, theorists can specify the contents of universally quantified sentences in first-order or second-order terms. We offer new evidence that this logical first-order vs. second-order distinction corresponds to a psychologically robust individual vs. group distinction that has behavioral repercussions. Participants were shown displays of dots and as…Read more
-
31Psycholinguistic evidence for restricted quantificationNatural Language Semantics 31 (2): 219-251. 2023.Quantificational determiners are often said to be devices for expressing relations. For example, the meaning of _every_ is standardly described as the inclusion relation, with a sentence like _every frog is green_ meaning roughly that the green things include the frogs. Here, we consider an older, non-relational alternative: determiners are tools for creating restricted quantifiers. On this view, determiners specify how many elements of a restricted domain (e.g., the frogs) satisfy a given condi…Read more
-
14Training nonsymbolic proportional reasoning in children and its effects on their symbolic math abilitiesCognition 197 (C): 104154. 2020.
-
8Bias and noise in proportion estimation: A mixture psychophysical modelCognition 213 (C): 104805. 2021.
-
21Effects of Visual Training of Approximate Number Sense on Auditory Number Sense and School Math AbilityFrontiers in Psychology 11. 2020.
-
393Epistemic Limitations and Precise Estimates in Analog Magnitude RepresentationIn A. Baron & D. Barner (eds.), Core Knowledge and Conceptual Change, Oxford University Press. pp. 167-186. 2016.This chapter presents a re-understanding of the contents of our analog magnitude representations (e.g., approximate duration, distance, number). The approximate number system (ANS) is considered, which supports numerical representations that are widely described as fuzzy, noisy, and limited in their representational power. The contention is made that these characterizations are largely based on misunderstandings—that what has been called “noise” and “fuzziness” is actually an important epi…Read more
-
91Interface transparency and the psychosemantics of mostNatural Language Semantics 19 (3): 227-256. 2011.This paper proposes an Interface Transparency Thesis concerning how linguistic meanings are related to the cognitive systems that are used to evaluate sentences for truth/falsity: a declarative sentence S is semantically associated with a canonical procedure for determining whether S is true; while this procedure need not be used as a verification strategy, competent speakers are biased towards strategies that directly reflect canonical specifications of truth conditions. Evidence in favor of th…Read more
-
129The meaning of 'most': Semantics, numerosity and psychologyMind and Language 24 (5): 554-585. 2009.The meaning of 'most' can be described in many ways. We offer a framework for distinguishing semantic descriptions, interpreted as psychological hypotheses that go beyond claims about sentential truth conditions, and an experiment that tells against an attractive idea: 'most' is understood in terms of one-to-one correspondence. Adults evaluated 'Most of the dots are yellow', as true or false, on many trials in which yellow dots and blue dots were displayed for 200 ms. Displays manipulated the ea…Read more
-
53A One-to-One Bias and Fast Mapping Support Preschoolers' Learning About Faces and VoicesCognitive Science 34 (5): 719-751. 2010.A multimodal person representation contains information about what a person looks like and what a person sounds like. However, little is known about how children form these face-voice mappings. Here, we explored the possibility that two cognitive tools that guide word learning, a one-to-one mapping bias and fast mapping, also guide children’s learning about faces and voices. We taught 4- and 5-year-olds mappings between three individual faces and voices, then presented them with new faces and vo…Read more
-
69Set representations required for the acquisition of the “natural number” conceptBehavioral and Brain Sciences 31 (6): 655-656. 2008.Rips et al. consider whether representations of individual objects or analog magnitudes are building blocks for the concept natural number. We argue for a third core capacity – the ability to bind representations of individuals into sets. However, even with this addition to the list of starting materials, we agree that a significant acquisition story is needed to capture natural number
-
30Children’s mappings between number words and the approximate number systemCognition 138 (C): 102-121. 2015.
-
36Contact Info: Paul Pietroski Department of Linguistics University of Maryland Marie Mount Hall College Park, MD 20742 USA Email: [email protected] Phone: +1 301-395-1747..
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics and Epistemology |
Science, Logic, and Mathematics |
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics and Epistemology |
Science, Logic, and Mathematics |