Default inheritance in modified statements
- It is a fact that human subjects rate sentences about typical properties such as "Ravens are black" as very likely to be true. In comparison, modified sentences such as "Feathered ravens are black" receive lower ratings, especially if the modifier is atypical for the noun, as in "Jungle ravens are black". This is called the \(\textit {modifier effect}\). However, the likelihood of the unmodified statement influences the perceived likelihood of the modified statement: the higher the rated likelihood of the unmodified sentence, the higher the rated likelihood of the modified one. That means the modifier effect does not fully block \(\textit {default inheritance}\) of typical properties from nouns to modified nouns. This paper discusses this inheritance effect. In particular, I ask whether it is the direct result of composing concepts from nouns, that is, a bias toward "black" when processing "raven". I report a series of experiments in which I find no evidence for a direct inheritance from composition. This supports the view that default inheritance is rather an inference than a bias.
| Author: | Corina StrößnerORCiDGND |
|---|---|
| URN: | urn:nbn:de:hbz:294-85799 |
| DOI: | https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.626023 |
| Parent Title (English): | Frontiers in psychology |
| Subtitle (English): | Bias or inference? |
| Publisher: | Frontiers Media |
| Place of publication: | Lausanne |
| Document Type: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Date of Publication (online): | 2022/02/11 |
| Date of first Publication: | 2021/04/30 |
| Publishing Institution: | Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Universitätsbibliothek |
| Tag: | Open Access Fonds compositionality; default inheritance; modifier effect; prototype theory; rational reasoning |
| Volume: | 12 |
| Issue: | Article 626023 |
| First Page: | 626023-1 |
| Last Page: | 626023-13 |
| Note: | Article Processing Charge funded by the Open Access Publication Fund of Ruhr-Universität Bochum. |
| Institutes/Facilities: | Institut für Philosophie II |
| Dewey Decimal Classification: | Philosophie und Psychologie / Psychologie |
| open_access (DINI-Set): | open_access |
| Licence (English): |  Creative Commons - CC BY 4.0 - Attribution 4.0 International |
