The mental representation of nonnumerical quantifiers: The Spatial-Linguistic Association of Response Codes (SLARC) effect.

Abbondanza, Martina; Rinaldi, Luca; Foppolo, Francesca; Marelli, Marco

doi:10.1037/xlm0001037

Cited by 6 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…For Arabic digits, SNARC effects have been observed with surface tasks (phoneme monitoring; Fias et al, 1996). For number words, the grammatical SNARC effect has only been found for semantic tasks (parity judgment, translation, quantity comparison; Abbondanza et al, 2021; De Brauwer et al, 2008; Fias, 2001; Roettger & Domahs, 2015). Finally, for grammatical number markers, the grammatical SNARC effect was only present with a quantity-related task (number categorization; Roettger & Domahs, 2015).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Given that grammatical SNARC effects have previously only been detected when participants are engaged in a task that forces them to engage with number information (e.g., Abbondanza et al, 2021; Roettger & Domahs, 2015), we used this kind of task in Experiment 1. In Experiment 1, participants indicated whether singular, plural, or collective words represented a single entity or something that could be subdivided into multiple entities.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Recently, Abbondanza et al (2021) found evidence that the processing of nonnumerical quantifiers can also produce SNARC-like effects. In their experiment, conducted in Italian, quantifiers were categorized as low magnitude (e.g., none , few , some ) or high magnitude (e.g., many , several , all ) based on the size of the set denoted by the quantifier (Newstead & Coventry, 2000; Pezzelle et al, 2018).…”

Section: Plural Referentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Collective nouns are conceptually plural: Evidence from the grammatical SNARC effect.

Patson,

Warren,

Hurler

et al. 2023

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

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To develop theories of how comprehenders extract the message from a linguistic stream, it is critical to understand how they conceptually represent referents. The experiments reported here focus on singular collective nouns (e.g., committee, team), which introduce a single group into the discourse and test whether they nonetheless are conceptually plural (i.e., construed as consisting of multiple entities) by using the spatial-numerical association of response codes (SNARC) paradigm (Dehaene & Changeux, 1993). In this paradigm, participants are typically faster to respond to smaller numbers or numerical stimuli when making a response on their left and faster to respond to larger numbers or numerical stimuli when making a response on their right. In three experiments, participants saw German words on a computer screen and decided whether each one described a single entity or something that could be subdivided into multiple entities (Experiment 1) or whether they would use "ist" or "sind" ("is" or "are") in combination with the word if it were the subject of a sentence (Experiments 2 and 3). The mapping of responses to participants' left and right hands was counterbalanced. Experiment 1 failed to show a grammatical SNARC effect. Experiments 2 and 3 showed a grammatical SNARC effect that extended to collective noun phrases. The results of these experiments suggest that collective noun phrases are instantiated as conceptually plural in comprehenders' minds. We discuss the differential task effects and the implications of these data on theories of language comprehension.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Plural Referentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Collective nouns are conceptually plural: Evidence from the grammatical SNARC effect.

Patson,

Warren,

Hurler

et al. 2023

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

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“…Association of Response Codes (SNARC) and related effects (Dehaene et al 1993, Prado et al 2007, Hinton et al 2006 see also Hubbard et al 2005). Behavioral reports of SNARC-like effects in the processing of linguistic quantifiers (Abbondanza et al 2021), along with clinical and neurophysiological evidence of IPC involvement in linguistically encoded quantities (Dastjerdi et al 2013) further reinforces this point.…”

Section: Item-based Versus Space-based Semantics In Ventral Versus Do...mentioning

confidence: 91%

An emergentist account of language in the brain – seeking neural synergies behind human uniqueness

Bourguignon,

Lo Bue

2024

Preprint

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Cognitive neuroscience has become increasingly open to views of human cognitive faculties as emergent properties – as higher-level products of synergies between brain structures handling qualitatively different functions. This new perspective mitigates claims that cognitive abilities are tied to localized, domain-specific brain systems. In this changing landscape the neurobiology of language has lagged behind, with virtually no mature theory apt to guide an exploration of language as an emergent function of the human brain. Combining evidence that linguistic processing is distributed across neurocognitive systems supporting (among others) semantic cognition, executive functions and articulatory-motor control with recent advances in studying neural synergies, we propose a model of language as a deeply synergistic phenomenon that is both decoupled from its lower-level constituents and capable of exerting downward causal powers over them, accounting for its key role in human adaptive behavior. In considering the implications it has in our understanding of the place of language within the broader infrastructure of human behavior, this novel perspective aims to move the neurobiology of language forward in a new era of the cognitive neuroscience.

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“…A word class that is related to numbers is quantifiers such as many, few, usually or seldom. In two recent studies with quantifiers, the SNARC effect was extended to SLARC (spatial-linguistic association of response codes; Dooley, 2021;Abbondanza et al, 2021). Dooley (2021) contextualized single quantifier words in winning or losing contexts and found the typical response side association for quantifiers representing smaller/larger values.…”

Section: Word-space Associationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Embodied Processing at Six Linguistic Granularity Levels: A Consensus Paper

Körner,

Castillo,

Drijvers

et al. 2023

Journal of Cognition

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Language processing is influenced by sensorimotor experiences. Here, we review behavioral evidence for embodied and grounded influences in language processing across six linguistic levels of granularity. We examine (a) sub-word features, discussing grounded influences on iconicity (systematic associations between word form and meaning); (b) words, discussing boundary conditions and generalizations for the simulation of color, sensory modality, and spatial position; (c) sentences, discussing boundary conditions and applications of action direction simulation; (d) texts, discussing how the teaching of simulation can improve comprehension in beginning readers; (e) conversations, discussing how multi-modal cues improve turn taking and alignment; and (f) text corpora, discussing how distributional semantic models can reveal how grounded and embodied knowledge is encoded in texts. These approaches are converging on a convincing account of the psychology of language, but at the same time, there are important criticisms of the embodied approach and of specific experimental paradigms. The surest way forward requires the adoption of a wide array of scientific methods. By providing complimentary evidence, a combination of multiple methods on various levels of granularity can help us gain a more complete understanding of the role of embodiment and grounding in language processing.

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The mental representation of nonnumerical quantifiers: The Spatial-Linguistic Association of Response Codes (SLARC) effect.

Abstract: We have no known conflict of interest to disclose.We thank Fondazione Fratelli Confalonieri for the financial support.

Cited by 6 publications

References 33 publications

Collective nouns are conceptually plural: Evidence from the grammatical SNARC effect.

Collective nouns are conceptually plural: Evidence from the grammatical SNARC effect.

An emergentist account of language in the brain – seeking neural synergies behind human uniqueness

Embodied Processing at Six Linguistic Granularity Levels: A Consensus Paper

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