The minimally counterintuitive (MCI) thesis in the cognitive science of religion proposes that su... more The minimally counterintuitive (MCI) thesis in the cognitive science of religion proposes that supernatural concepts are prevalent across cultures because they possess a common structure—namely, violations of intuitive ontological assumptions that facilitate concept representation. These violations are hypothesized to give supernatural concepts a memorability advantage over both intuitive concepts and “maximally counterintuitive” (MXCI) concepts, which contain numerous ontological violations. However, the connection between MCI concepts and bizarre (BIZ) but not supernatural concepts, for which memorability advantages are predicted by the von Restorff (VR) effect, has been insufficiently clarified by earlier research. Additionally, the role of inferential potential (IP) in determining MCI concepts’ memorability has remained vague and only rarely controlled for. In a pre‐registered experiment, we directly compare memorability for MCI and MXCI concepts, compared to BIZ concepts, while...
Decades of findings in psychology appear to indicate that human belief is thoroughly irrational. ... more Decades of findings in psychology appear to indicate that human belief is thoroughly irrational. At best, beliefs might be formed by heuristic processes that predictably lead to suboptimal outcomes. At worst, they are slaves to motivated reasoning, which allows people to come to whichever conclusions they prefer. In this paper, we argue that belief is best understood as the outcome of multiple processes, some rational and others susceptible to irrational influences. We suggest that belief updating, narrowly construed, may be a rational process that is uniquely sensitive to evidence and cognitively impenetrable to desires or incentives. Before any updating can occur, however, a series of processes mediate between information in the world and subjectively compelling evidence. We distinguish between updating proper and processes of evidence search, acceptance, hypothesis specification, integration of relevant information, and reasoning. We review research from philosophy and psychology...
We evaluate the literature on the memorability of supernatural concepts (e.g., gods, ghosts, soul... more We evaluate the literature on the memorability of supernatural concepts (e.g., gods, ghosts, souls), itself part of a growing body of work in the emerging cognitive science of religion (Barrett, 2007). Specifically, we focus on Boyer’s (1994a, 2000, 2001) Minimally Counterintuitive (MCI) hypothesis according to which supernatural concepts tap a cognitively privileged memory-enhancing mechanism linked to violations of default intuitive inferences. Our assessment reveals that the literature on the MCI hypothesis is mired in empirical contradictions and methodological shortcomings which makes it difficult to assess the validity of competing theoretical models, including the MCI hypothesis itself. In light of this fractured picture, we make the case for an account of the MCI effect which dispenses with a memory mechanism specific to supernatural concepts. This account has several desirable properties. First, it preserves Boyer’s pioneering insights regarding the ontological status of su...
Thesis (M.A.)--University of Maryland at College Park, 1997. Thesis research directed by Dept. of... more Thesis (M.A.)--University of Maryland at College Park, 1997. Thesis research directed by Dept. of Linguistics. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 69-71).
Quantifiers are expressions that denote number and quantity. When quantifiers interact with each ... more Quantifiers are expressions that denote number and quantity. When quantifiers interact with each other or with other logical expressions in a sentence, the resulting interpretation may be ambiguous. In this paper, we focus on young chilren's understanding of the interaction of the universal quantifiers every and each with wh-expressions (who, which) in questions
Abstract: In a head final language, verb-raising is hard to detect since there is no evidence fro... more Abstract: In a head final language, verb-raising is hard to detect since there is no evidence from the string to support a raising analysis. This is so both for children acquiring the language and for linguists developing an analysis of it. If the language has a clitic-like negation that associates with the verb in syntax, then scope facts concerning negation and a quantified object NP could provide evidence regarding the height of the verb. Even so, such facts are rare, especially in the input to children, and so we might be led to expect that not all speakers exposed to a head-final language acquire the same grammar as far as verb-raising is concerned. In this paper, we present evidence supporting this expectation. Using experimental data concerning the scope of quantified NPs and negation in Korean, extracted from both adults and 4 year-old children, we show that there are two populations of Korean speakers: one with verb-raising and one without.
We introduce the first set of normed stimuli designed to resolve methodological and theoretical i... more We introduce the first set of normed stimuli designed to resolve methodological and theoretical issues that have muddled the interpretation of results on the memorability of supernatural concepts (e.g., ghosts, souls, spirits), an important line of research in the Cognitive Science of Religion (Barrett, 2000). We focus here on Boyer’s (1994, 2000, 2001) pioneering Minimally Counterintuitive (MCI) hypothesis according to which supernatural concepts tap a special memory-enhancing mechanism linked to violations of default intuitive inferences. Empirical tests of the MCI account have given rise to a vexed picture that renders meaningful interpretation difficult. The lack of a common standard of comparison among different studies, coupled with the presence of uncontrolled variables independently known to affect memorability, lie at the heart of these problems. We show that our new stimuli offer the hope of resolving these issues thereby establishing a more secure foundation for the study...
The interaction of universal quantifiers and wh-phrases in questions, such as Which class did eve... more The interaction of universal quantifiers and wh-phrases in questions, such as Which class did every student take?, gives rise to structural ambiguities. The availability of pair-list answers (Mary took Syntax, and Jane took Semantics) to such questions reveals whether the quantifier can take wide scope over the wh. In this paper, we use an acceptability judgment task to test whether, as some theoretical accounts suggest (e.g. May 1985), the quantifier position affects the likelihood of an inverse scope reading for distributive quantifiers, such as every and each. We show that pair-list answers remain less available for questions with object quantifiers than for questions with subject quantifiers even when the quantifier is each (contra Beghelli 1997). At the same time, speakers find pair-list answers to questions with each more acceptable than to questions with every, confirming that the distributivity force of a quantifier also plays a role. We discuss how these findings fit into t...
The minimally counterintuitive (MCI) thesis in the cognitive science of religion proposes that su... more The minimally counterintuitive (MCI) thesis in the cognitive science of religion proposes that supernatural concepts are prevalent across cultures because they possess a common structure—namely, violations of intuitive ontological assumptions that facilitate concept representation. These violations are hypothesized to give supernatural concepts a memorability advantage over both intuitive concepts and “maximally counterintuitive” (MXCI) concepts, which contain numerous ontological violations. However, the connection between MCI concepts and bizarre (BIZ) but not supernatural concepts, for which memorability advantages are predicted by the von Restorff (VR) effect, has been insufficiently clarified by earlier research. Additionally, the role of inferential potential (IP) in determining MCI concepts’ memorability has remained vague and only rarely controlled for. In a pre‐registered experiment, we directly compare memorability for MCI and MXCI concepts, compared to BIZ concepts, while...
Decades of findings in psychology appear to indicate that human belief is thoroughly irrational. ... more Decades of findings in psychology appear to indicate that human belief is thoroughly irrational. At best, beliefs might be formed by heuristic processes that predictably lead to suboptimal outcomes. At worst, they are slaves to motivated reasoning, which allows people to come to whichever conclusions they prefer. In this paper, we argue that belief is best understood as the outcome of multiple processes, some rational and others susceptible to irrational influences. We suggest that belief updating, narrowly construed, may be a rational process that is uniquely sensitive to evidence and cognitively impenetrable to desires or incentives. Before any updating can occur, however, a series of processes mediate between information in the world and subjectively compelling evidence. We distinguish between updating proper and processes of evidence search, acceptance, hypothesis specification, integration of relevant information, and reasoning. We review research from philosophy and psychology...
We evaluate the literature on the memorability of supernatural concepts (e.g., gods, ghosts, soul... more We evaluate the literature on the memorability of supernatural concepts (e.g., gods, ghosts, souls), itself part of a growing body of work in the emerging cognitive science of religion (Barrett, 2007). Specifically, we focus on Boyer’s (1994a, 2000, 2001) Minimally Counterintuitive (MCI) hypothesis according to which supernatural concepts tap a cognitively privileged memory-enhancing mechanism linked to violations of default intuitive inferences. Our assessment reveals that the literature on the MCI hypothesis is mired in empirical contradictions and methodological shortcomings which makes it difficult to assess the validity of competing theoretical models, including the MCI hypothesis itself. In light of this fractured picture, we make the case for an account of the MCI effect which dispenses with a memory mechanism specific to supernatural concepts. This account has several desirable properties. First, it preserves Boyer’s pioneering insights regarding the ontological status of su...
Thesis (M.A.)--University of Maryland at College Park, 1997. Thesis research directed by Dept. of... more Thesis (M.A.)--University of Maryland at College Park, 1997. Thesis research directed by Dept. of Linguistics. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 69-71).
Quantifiers are expressions that denote number and quantity. When quantifiers interact with each ... more Quantifiers are expressions that denote number and quantity. When quantifiers interact with each other or with other logical expressions in a sentence, the resulting interpretation may be ambiguous. In this paper, we focus on young chilren's understanding of the interaction of the universal quantifiers every and each with wh-expressions (who, which) in questions
Abstract: In a head final language, verb-raising is hard to detect since there is no evidence fro... more Abstract: In a head final language, verb-raising is hard to detect since there is no evidence from the string to support a raising analysis. This is so both for children acquiring the language and for linguists developing an analysis of it. If the language has a clitic-like negation that associates with the verb in syntax, then scope facts concerning negation and a quantified object NP could provide evidence regarding the height of the verb. Even so, such facts are rare, especially in the input to children, and so we might be led to expect that not all speakers exposed to a head-final language acquire the same grammar as far as verb-raising is concerned. In this paper, we present evidence supporting this expectation. Using experimental data concerning the scope of quantified NPs and negation in Korean, extracted from both adults and 4 year-old children, we show that there are two populations of Korean speakers: one with verb-raising and one without.
We introduce the first set of normed stimuli designed to resolve methodological and theoretical i... more We introduce the first set of normed stimuli designed to resolve methodological and theoretical issues that have muddled the interpretation of results on the memorability of supernatural concepts (e.g., ghosts, souls, spirits), an important line of research in the Cognitive Science of Religion (Barrett, 2000). We focus here on Boyer’s (1994, 2000, 2001) pioneering Minimally Counterintuitive (MCI) hypothesis according to which supernatural concepts tap a special memory-enhancing mechanism linked to violations of default intuitive inferences. Empirical tests of the MCI account have given rise to a vexed picture that renders meaningful interpretation difficult. The lack of a common standard of comparison among different studies, coupled with the presence of uncontrolled variables independently known to affect memorability, lie at the heart of these problems. We show that our new stimuli offer the hope of resolving these issues thereby establishing a more secure foundation for the study...
The interaction of universal quantifiers and wh-phrases in questions, such as Which class did eve... more The interaction of universal quantifiers and wh-phrases in questions, such as Which class did every student take?, gives rise to structural ambiguities. The availability of pair-list answers (Mary took Syntax, and Jane took Semantics) to such questions reveals whether the quantifier can take wide scope over the wh. In this paper, we use an acceptability judgment task to test whether, as some theoretical accounts suggest (e.g. May 1985), the quantifier position affects the likelihood of an inverse scope reading for distributive quantifiers, such as every and each. We show that pair-list answers remain less available for questions with object quantifiers than for questions with subject quantifiers even when the quantifier is each (contra Beghelli 1997). At the same time, speakers find pair-list answers to questions with each more acceptable than to questions with every, confirming that the distributivity force of a quantifier also plays a role. We discuss how these findings fit into t...
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