Processing of Numerical and Proportional Quantifiers

Shikhare, Sailee; Heim, Stefan; Klein, Elise; Huber, Stefan; Willmes, Klaus

doi:10.1111/cogs.12219

Cited by 15 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 70 publications

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“…Interestingly, within the class of “fuzzy quantifiers” like the majority quantifiers “many” and “few” tested in the present study, there seem to be differences between individual quantifiers. Whereas we did observe adaptation of the meaning of both quantifiers, we also found that this adaptation effect was even more pronounced for “many” than for “few.” This result corresponds to earlier reports in the literature (e.g., Routh, 1994 ; Geurts, 2003 ; Heim et al, 2012 ; Shikhare et al, 2015 ) that quantifiers with negative polarity are more difficult to process. There are various accounts for this effect.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

If so many are “few,” how few are “many”?

et al. 2015

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The scope of reference of a word's meaning can be highly variable. We present a novel paradigm to investigate the flexible interpretation of word meaning. We focus on quantifiers such as “many” or “few,” a class of words that depends on number knowledge but can be interpreted in a flexible manner. Healthy young adults performed a truth value judgment task on pictorial arrays of varying amounts of blue and yellow circles, deciding whether the sentence “Many/few of the circles are yellow” was an adequate description of the stimulus. The study consisted of two experiments, one focusing on “many,” one on “few.” Each experiment had three blocks. In a first “baseline” block, each individual's criterion for “many” and “few” was assessed. In a second “adaptation” block, subjects received feedback about their decisions that was different from their initial judgments in an effort to evaluate the flexibility of a subject's interpretation. A third “test” block assessed whether adaptation of quantifier meaning induced in block 2 then was generalized to alter a subject's baseline meaning for “many” and “few.” In Experiment 1, a proportion of yellow circles as small as 40% was reinforced as “many”; in Experiment 2, a proportion of yellow circles as large as 60% was reinforced as “few.” Subjects learned the new criterion for “many” in Experiment 1, which also affected their criterion for “few” although it had never been mentioned. Likewise, in Experiment 2, subjects changed their criterion for “few,” with a comparable effect on the criterion for “many” which was not mentioned. Thus, the meaning of relational quantifiers like “many” and “few” is flexible and can be adapted. Most importantly, adapting the criterion for one quantifier (e.g., “many”) also appeared to affect the reciprocal quantifier (in this case, “few”). Implications of this result for psychological interventions and for investigations of the neurobiology of the language-number interface are discussed.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

If so many are “few,” how few are “many”?

et al. 2015

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“…First, the main effect of QUANTIFIER nicely replicates the reports in the literature FIGURE 2 | Reaction times in the truth-value judgment task as a function of proportion of the target color (in%), experimental block (Block 1: before adaptation; Block 3: after adaptation), and quantifier (many, few). (Heim et al, 2012;Deschamps et al, 2015;Shikhare et al, 2015): The negative quantifier took, overall, longer to be processed. Second, the main effect of BLOCK revealed that the participants became more used to the task.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Thus, it was neither the amount of circles nor the polarity of the quantifier alone that determined the choice of the correct response button (left/right), but the combination. For that reason, we chose not to refer to literature on response compatibility in experimental settings similar to the one we used here (for a discussion of strategies of quantifier processing, the MNL, and response selection, see, e.g., Shikhare et al, 2015).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Few” or “Many”? An Adaptation Level Theory Account for Flexibility in Quantifier Processing

2020

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“…In the context of germs, by comparison, “many” would imply billions of microbes. Conversely, the numbers assigned to the quantifiers “very few”, “few”, “only a few”, “a few”, or “not many” were largely in the same range, thus allowing no semantic differentiation between these quantifiers (Moxey & Sanford, 1993; see also Moxey & Sanford, 2000) (see also Shikhare et al 2015). Subjects thus tend to assign rank-ordered scopes to different quantifiers (Oaksford et al, 2002), where “few” denotes more than “none”, for example, “many” more than “few”, and “all” more than “many.” However, there may be considerable flexibility in the assignment of meaning within each of these quantifiers.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How the brain learns how few are “many”: An fMRI study of the flexibility of quantifier semantics

et al. 2016

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Previous work has shown that the meaning of a quantifier such as “many” or “few” depends in part on quantity. However, the meaning of a quantifier may vary depending on the context, e.g. in the case of common entities such as “many ants” (perhaps several thousands) compared to endangered species such as “many pandas” (perhaps a dozen). In a recent study (Heim et al. 2015 Front. Psychol.) we demonstrated that the relative meaning of “many” and “few” may be changed experimentally. In a truth value judgment task, displays with 40% of circles in a named color initially had a low probability of being labeled “many”. After a training phase, the likelihood of acceptance 40% as “many” increased. Moreover, the semantic learning effect also generalized to the related quantifier “few” which had not been mentioned in the training phase. Thus, fewer 40% arrays were considered “few.” In the present study, we tested the hypothesis that this semantic adaptation effect was supported by cytoarchitectonic Brodmann area (BA) 45 in Broca’s region which may contribute to semantic evaluation in the context of language and quantification. In an event-related fMRI study, 17 healthy volunteers performed the same paradigm as in the previous behavioral study. We found a relative signal increase when comparing the critical, trained proportion to untrained proportions. This specific effect was found in left BA 45 for the trained quantifier “many”, and in left BA 44 for both quantifiers, reflecting the semantic adjustment for the untrained but related quantifier “few.” These findings demonstrate the neural basis for processing the flexible meaning of a quantifier, and illustrate the neuroanatomical structures that contribute to variable meanings that can be associated with a word when used in different contexts.

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Processing of Numerical and Proportional Quantifiers

Cited by 15 publications

References 70 publications

If so many are “few,” how few are “many”?

If so many are “few,” how few are “many”?

“Few” or “Many”? An Adaptation Level Theory Account for Flexibility in Quantifier Processing

How the brain learns how few are “many”: An fMRI study of the flexibility of quantifier semantics

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