One of the main limitations of natural language-based approaches to meaning is that they do not incorporate multimodal representations the way humans do. In this study, we evaluate how well different kinds of models account for people's representations of both concrete and abstract concepts. The models we compare include unimodal distributional…

This dissertation presents various machine learning applications for predicting different cognitive states of students while they are using a vocabulary tutoring system, DSCoVAR. We conduct four studies, each of which includes a comprehensive analysis of behavioral and linguistic data and provides data-driven evidence for designing personalized…

Definite descriptions have a number of different readings, the most prominent being the referential and attributive readings. On the referential reading, the description "The current President of the USA" is interpreted as "Barack Obama"; read attributively, it is interpreted as "the current President of the USA, whoever…

In this article I posit translation as philosophical operation that disrupts commonsense meaning and understanding. By defamiliarising language, translation can arrest thinking about a text in a way that assumes the language is understood. In recent work I have grappled with the phrase "ways of knowing", which, for linguistic and conceptual…

Author brought out some of the more important ambiguities in the word "consider" and related them to teaching and learning. He did so with the intention of assessing the views of those who urge the schools to consider issues they have often avoided. (Author/RK)

Even a superficial review of the literature on cognition would suggest that philosophers of the past and psychologists of the present frequently were concerned with the same problems. For the past three centuries, psychologists and philosophers have relied upon the concept of cognition to describe complex human functions such as memory, thinking,…

Two experiments tested a set of predictions regarding category definitions and categorization latencies. Neither prediction was supported by the experiment results, leading to the formulation of an alternative feature-based model of category definitions using the notion of a polymorphous concept. (Author/AM)

In a statement-response-reply format, a proposition concerning the study of semantics is made and debated in three papers by two authors. In the first paper, it is proposed that semantics is not the study of the concept of meaning, but rather a neurolinguistic issue, despite the fact that semantics is linked to context. It is argued that semantic…

The relation definition theory proposed in this paper is explicitly different from previous semantic memory theories since it is the first to make a relation's definition the basis of semantic processing. The paper suggests that this relation definition theory successfully predicts relation similarity on the basis of one key primary assumption:…

This book discusses the act of understanding in mathematics. The first chapter, "Understanding and Meaning," inquires into the various senses and uses of the word "understanding" in ordinary language and discusses the notion of meaning and relations between understanding and meaning. The second chapter, "Components and…

Takes an in-depth look at the probabilistic nature of human communication, i.e, the misinterpretation of the language-producer message by the language comprehender. Reviews the psycho-linguistic, linguistic and philosophical literature dealing with this aspect of language and demonstrates that this misinterpretation is related to a basic process…

This study is part of a program designed to attempt identification of dissonance through components of electrophysiological instrumentation, for measuring and presenting to a person some of his own unconscious dissonance, of which he is normally unaware. Using college students as subjects, the authors used attitude ratings on values to attempt to…

Experiment in which university undergraduates were given word definitions and asked to say aloud responses that came to mind in the course of their attempts to retrieve target words is described. Results indicated phonologically similar responses and word-fragments were predictors of target-word knowledge and likelihood of success in retrieval was…

Evidence for speaker knowledge of morphological patterns, both derivational and inflectional, is not limited to productive patterns. Nonproductive patterns appear to be accessible in such a way that accessibility (a term preferred to "psychological reality") may be viewed as a function of four somewhat interdependent factors: (1) productivity, (2)…

A set of procedures for coding internal state words (those words representing mental states and perceptual experiences), developed for application to data on the language of young children and those with whom they converse, is described in this report. The report first discusses the rationale for studying cultural variation in vocabulary use, the…