TY - CONF
T1 - The contingency symmetry bias as a foundation of word learning
T2 - 44th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Cognitive Diversity, CogSci 2022
AU - Imai, Mutsumi
AU - Murai, Chiaki
AU - Ohba, Masato
AU - Hidaka, Shohei
AU - Okada, Hiroyuki
AU - Hashiya, Kazuhide
N1 - Funding Information:
This study was supported by MEXT/JSPS KAKENHI Grant Numbers 20H00014, 16H01928, 18H05084 to Mutsumi Imai. We would like to thank Mayumi Saito, Yuka Yamazaki, Kaoru Takata and Michiko Miyazaki for their help with data collection. We would also like to thank all caregivers and infants who participated in this study.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Author(s). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY)
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - The contingency symmetry inference, the inference to generalize a learned contingency to a reverse direction, is known to be extremely difficult for non-human animal species (Lionello-DeNolf, 2009). In contrast, humans are known to have the “affirming the consequent fallacy”, which reverses the antecedent and the consequence (if P then Q: Q therefore P). The contingency symmetry bias has been long discussed in relation to the ontogenesis of language learning, as word learning requires understanding of bidirectional relationship between symbols and objects. But how this bias emerges has not been known. This research tested whether 8-month-old human infants have this bias on a matching-to-sample task. The results demonstrated the possession of this bias in human infants before they start active word learning. This bias is likely a uniquely human cognitive bias, which may explain why only humans have language.
AB - The contingency symmetry inference, the inference to generalize a learned contingency to a reverse direction, is known to be extremely difficult for non-human animal species (Lionello-DeNolf, 2009). In contrast, humans are known to have the “affirming the consequent fallacy”, which reverses the antecedent and the consequence (if P then Q: Q therefore P). The contingency symmetry bias has been long discussed in relation to the ontogenesis of language learning, as word learning requires understanding of bidirectional relationship between symbols and objects. But how this bias emerges has not been known. This research tested whether 8-month-old human infants have this bias on a matching-to-sample task. The results demonstrated the possession of this bias in human infants before they start active word learning. This bias is likely a uniquely human cognitive bias, which may explain why only humans have language.
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M3 - Paper
AN - SCOPUS:85146430525
SP - 3161
EP - 3166
Y2 - 27 July 2022 through 30 July 2022
ER -