Individuals versus ensembles and "each" versus "every": linguistic framing affects performance in a change detection task

Abstract

Though each and every are both distributive universal quantifiers, a common theme in linguistic and psycholinguistic investigations into them has been that each is somehow more individualistic than every. We offer a novel explanation for this generalization: each has a first-order meaning which serves as an internalized instruction to cognition to build a thought that calls for representing the (restricted) domain as a series of individuals; by contrast, every has a second-order meaning which serves as an instruction to build a thought that calls for grouping the domain. In support of this view, we show that these distinct meanings invite the use of distinct verification strategies, using a novel paradigm. In two experiments, participants who had been asked to verify sentences like each/every circle is green were subsequently given a change detection task. Those who evaluated each-sentences were better able to detect the change, suggesting they encoded the individual circles' colors to a greater degree. Taken together with past work demonstrating that participants recall group properties after evaluating sentences with every better than after evaluating sentences with each, these results support the hypothesis that each and every call for treating the individuals that constitute their domain differently: as independent individuals (each) or as members of an ensemble collection (every). We situate our findings within a conception of linguistic meanings as instructions for thought building, on which the format of the resulting thought has consequences for how meanings interface with non-linguistic cognition.