title: The logical primitives of thought: Empirical foundations for compositional cognitive models.
abstract: The notion of a compositional language of thought (LOT) has been central in computational accounts of cognition from earliest attempts (Boole, 1854; Fodor, 1975) to the present day (Feldman, 2000; Penn, Holyoak, & Povinelli, 2008; Fodor, 2008; Kemp, 2012; Goodman, Tenenbaum, & Gerstenberg, 2015). Recent modeling work shows how statistical inferences over compositionally structured hypothesis spaces might explain learning and development across a variety of domains. However, the primitive components of such representations are typically assumed a priori by modelers and theoreticians rather than determined empirically. We show how different sets of LOT primitives, embedded in a psychologically realistic approximate Bayesian inference framework, systematically predict distinct learning curves in rule-based concept learning experiments. We use this feature of LOT models to design a set of large-scale concept learning experiments that can determine the most likely primitives for psychological concepts involving Boolean connectives and quantification. Subjects' inferences are most consistent with a rich (nonminimal) set of Boolean operations, including first-order, but not second-order, quantification. Our results more generally show how specific LOT theories can be distinguished empirically. (PsycINFO Database Record
authors.affiliation: Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences.
authors.forename: Steven T
authors.initials: ST
authors.lastname: Piantadosi
authors.affiliation: Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
authors.forename: Joshua B
authors.initials: JB
authors.lastname: Tenenbaum
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Stanford University.
authors.forename: Noah D
authors.initials: ND
authors.lastname: Goodman
mesh_terms: D001499:Bayes Theorem; D003071:Cognition; D003210:Concept Formation; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D007858:Learning; D008128:Logic; D008960:Models, Psychological; D013850:Thinking