title: The processing of polar quantifiers, and numerosity perception.
abstract: We investigated the course of language processing in the context of a verification task that required numerical estimation and comparison. Participants listened to sentences with complex quantifiers that contrasted in Polarity, a logical property (e.g., more-than-half, less-than-half), and then performed speeded verification on visual scenarios that displayed a proportion between 2 discrete quantities. We varied systematically not only the sentences, but also the visual materials, in order to study their effect on the verification process. Next, we used the same visual scenarios with analogous non-verbal probes that featured arithmetical inequality symbols (<, >). This manipulation enabled us to measure not only Polarity effects, but also, to compare the effect of different probe types (linguistic, non-linguistic) on processing. Like many previous studies, our results demonstrate that perceptual difficulty affects error rate and reaction time in keeping with Weber's Law. Interestingly, these performance parameters are also affected by the Polarity of the quantifiers used, despite the fact that sentences had the exact same meaning, sentence structure, number of words, syllables, and temporal structure. Moreover, an analogous contrast between the non-linguistic probes (<, >) had no effect on performance. Finally, we observed no interaction between performance parameters governed by Weber's Law and those affected by Polarity. We consider 4 possible accounts of the results (syntactic, semantic, pragmatic, frequency-based), and discuss their relative merit.
authors.affiliation: Department of Rehabilitation, Laval University, Canada; Department of Linguistics, McGill University, Canada.
authors.forename: Isabelle
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Deschamps
authors.affiliation: The Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.
authors.forename: Galit
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Agmon
authors.affiliation: The Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel; Department of Neurobiology, The Alexander Silberman Institute of Life Sciences, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel; The Federmann Center for the Study of Rationality, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.
authors.forename: Yonatan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Loewenstein
authors.affiliation: Department of Linguistics, McGill University, Canada; The Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel; Language, Logic and Cognition Center, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel; INM-1, Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany. Electronic address: yosef.grodzinsky@mail.huji.ac.il.
authors.forename: Yosef
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Grodzinsky
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000465:Algorithms; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology; D032882:Comprehension / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Language processing; Monotonicity; Natural language quantifiers; Numerical cognition; Polarity; Verification algorithms; Weber’s Law