Month: June 2024

Flexible Conceptual Representations

Abstract A view that has been gaining prevalence over the past decade is that the human conceptual system is malleable, dynamic, context-dependent, and task-dependent, that is, flexible. Within the flexible conceptual representation framework, conceptual representations are constructed ad hoc, forming a different, idiosyncratic instantiation upon each occurrence. In this review, we scrutinize the neurocognitive literature […]

Published on June 25, 2024

Vision Verbs Emerge First in English Acquisition but Touch, not Audition, Follows Second

Abstract Words that describe sensory perception give insight into how language mediates human experience, and the acquisition of these words is one way to examine how we learn to categorize and communicate sensation. We examine the differential predictions of the typological prevalence hypothesis and embodiment hypothesis regarding the acquisition of perception verbs. Studies 1 and […]

Published on June 25, 2024

Realistic About Reference Production: Testing the Effects of Domain Size and Saturation

Abstract Experiments on visually grounded, definite reference production often manipulate simple visual scenes in the form of grids filled with objects, for example, to test how speakers are affected by the number of objects that are visible. Regarding the latter, it was found that speech onset times increase along with domain size, at least when […]

Published on June 25, 2024