The debate over how best to characterize inflectional morphology has been couched largely in terms of the “dual-mechanism” approach described in Pinker (Words and rules: the ingredients of language, Basic Books, 1999) versus “single-mechanism” connectionist approaches derived from Rumelhart and McClelland (On learning past tenses of English verbs, MIT, 1986). There are, however, other single-mechanism approaches. The exemplar-based or analogical models of Daelemans et al. (TimBL: Tilburg Memory-Based Learner, version 4.3 reference guide, ILK, 2002) and Skousen (Analogical modeling of language, (...) Kluwer Academic, 1989) also model inflectional usage accurately within a single-mechanism. The most striking theoretical claim peculiar to these purely analogical models is that they do not posit any resident linguistic generalizations for processing language. Instead they process new instances of usage by comparing them systematically to remembered instances of previous usage. Based on a comparison of their Minimal Generalization Model with an adaptation of Nosofsky's (Journal of Mathematical Psychology 34: 393–418, 1990) Generalized Context Model, Albright and Hayes (Cognition 90: 119–161, 2003) argue that such purely analogical models are intrinsically inadequate for modeling the English past tense. This paper shows, however, that Skousen's (Analogical modeling of language, Kluwer Academic, 1989) Analogical Model performs as well as the Minimal Generalization Model. The implications of these results for cognitive linguistics are discussed. (shrink)

The specificity of the bilingual advantage in memory was examined by testing groups of monolingual, bilingual, and trilingual 24-month-olds on tasks tapping cued recall, memory generalization and working memory. For the cued recall and memory generalization conditions, there was a 24-h delay between time of encoding and time of retrieval. In addition to the memory tasks, parent-toddler dyads completed a picture-book reading task, in order to observe emotional responsiveness, and a parental report of productive vocabulary. Results indicated no difference between (...) language groups on cued recall, working memory, emotional responsiveness, or productive vocabulary, but a significant difference was found in the memory generalization condition with only the bilingual group outperforming the baseline control group. These results replicate and extend results from past studies (Brito and Barr, 2012, 2014 ; Brito et al., 2014 ) and suggest a bilingual advantage specific to memory generalization. (shrink)

We report the results of an experiment which investigates the impact of the manner in which likelihood information is presented to decision-makers on valuations assigned to lotteries. We find that subjects who observe representative sequences of outcomes attach higher valuations to lotteries than those who are given only a verbal description of a probability distribution. We interpret this in terms of a reduction in ambiguity about the possible lottery outcomes. These findings suggest that ambiguity aversion may be a confounding factor (...) in reported experimental violations of expected utility theory based on verbal descriptions of probability distributions. (shrink)

Violations of expected utility theory are sometimes attributed to imprecise preferences interacting with a lack of learning opportunity in the experimental laboratory. This paper reports an experimental test of whether a learning opportunity which engenders accurate probability assessments, by enhancing understanding of the meaning of stated probability information, causes anomalous behaviour to diminish. The data show that whilst in some cases expected utility maximising behaviour increases with the learning opportunity, so too do systematic violations. Therefore, there should be no presumption (...) that anomalous behaviour under risk is transient and that discovered preferences will be appropriately described by expected utility theory. (shrink)

General principles of human cognition can help to explain why languages are more likely to have certain characteristics than others: structures that are difficult to process or produce will tend to be lost over time. One aspect of cognition that is implicated in language use is working memory—the component of short‐term memory used for temporary storage and manipulation of information. In this study, we consider the relationship between working memory and regularization of linguistic variation. Regularization is a well‐documented process whereby (...) languages become less variable (on some dimension) over time. This process has been argued to be driven by the behavior of individual language users, but the specific mechanism is not agreed upon. Here, we use an artificial language learning experiment to investigate whether limitations in working memory during either language learning or language production drive regularization behavior. We find that taxing working memory during production results in the loss of all types of variation, but the process by which random variation becomes more predictable is better explained by learning biases. A computational model offers a potential explanation for the production effect using a simple self‐priming mechanism. (shrink)

The paper presents a set of games of competition between two or three players in which reward is jointly determined by a stochastic biased mechanism and players’ choices. More specifically, a resource can be found with unequal probabilities in one of two locations. The first agent is rewarded only if it finds the resource and avoids being found by the next agent in line; the latter is rewarded only if it finds the former. Five benchmarks, based on different psychological and (...) game-theoretic assumptions are derived and their predictions compared to actual behavior of 120, 40, and 48 participants playing repeatedly. Of the five benchmarks—the unique (Nash) equilibrium, reinforcement learning, trust-based efficiency, maximum unpredictability, and regret-based (Impulse Balance) equilibrium—regret for missed opportunities best accounts for the qualitative aspect of participants’ behavior and regret attenuated by randomization best accounts for the quantitative aspect of behavior. (shrink)