Quantity Judgment Task Research Articles

The cultural adaptation of quantity judgment tasks in Ghanaian English and Akan

The phenomenon of mass and countability is multifaceted and has been controversially discussed in many disciplines. For linguistics, differences in the morphosyntactic marking of the distinction cross-linguistically, and its cross-cultural ontological-semantic conceptualization are particularly interesting. However, most studies into mass and countability have focused on (American) English, and, to some extent European and Asian languages. African languages and contexts have as yet been neglected by researchinto countability, and the methodological tools employed to study it do not account for the ambient cultural contexts. This paper presents the results of a quantity judgment task designed according to Barner and Snedeker’s (2005) experiment for American English speakers, conducted in Ghanaian English and Akan. The Ghanaian experiments reveal important concerns regarding the stimuli and their applicability, especially to Akan culture. Thus, inspired by other studies into the semantics of Akan, a new set of stimuli is suggested in order to investigate mass and countability contrastively in Ghanaian English and Akan. In this vein, they emphasize the insufficiency of translations with regard to (psycho)linguistic experiments and the importance of proper cultural adaptation.

Quantity judgment and the mass-count distinction across languages: Advances, problems, and future directions for research

We review advances in the experimental study of the mass-count distinction and highlight problems that have emerged. First, we lay out what we see to be the scientific enterprise of studying the syntax and semantics of the mass-count distinction, and the assumptions we believe must be made if additional progress is to occur, especially as the empirical facts continue to grow in number and complexity. Second, we discuss the new landscape of cross-linguistic results that has been created by widespread use of the quantity judgment task, and what these results tell us about the nature of the mass-count distinction. Finally, we discuss the relationship between the mass-count distinction and non-linguistic cognition, and in particular the object-substance distinction.

Nouns are both mass and count: Evidence from unclassified nouns in adult and child Mandarin Chinese

This paper examines the interpretation of unclassified nouns in Mandarin Chinese from the perspective of three theoretical approaches to the mass-count distinction in Mandarin: a lexico-syntactic approach (Doetjes 1997; Cheng & Sybesma 1998), a syntax-driven approach (Borer 2005), and a hybrid approach (Pelletier 2012). Employing a Quantity Judgment Task (Barner & Snedeker 2005), we examined the interpretation of unclassified nouns of different ontological types (count, mass, flexible, object-mass) in both adult and child Mandarin. In order to explain possible interpretational preferences, we also analysed the distributions of the tested nouns in the Chinese Internet Corpus (Sharoff 2006). The results of 27 adults and 55 children (2;11–5;09), together with the corpus data provide strong support for Pelletier. We therefore conclude that Mandarin nouns are semantically both count and mass, and receive a number-based or a volume-based interpretation according to the type of classifier they appear with. However, we argue for one exception in this respect: following Bale & Barner (2009) we assume that nouns of the object-mass type (e.g., furniture) are marked for individualization in the lexicon. Finally, the emergence of adultlike preferences for number-based or volume-based interpretations in child Mandarin is argued to be linked to the acquisition of the classifier system.

Mass-count distinction in Chinese-English bilingual students

There has been increased interest in examining the relationship between different linguistic modules in second language learners’ grammar system. One such interface concerns learners’ ability to map morphosyntax to target-like semantic interpretations, especially in cases where the first and second languages differ in morphosyntax-semantics mapping. We examined this issue by investigating Chinese-English bilingual adolescents’ knowledge regarding the semantic consequences of mass-count morphosyntax in English. 228 Chinese-English bilingual students from Singapore took part in a quantity judgment task. Following previous studies, we tested five noun conditions including count (e.g., shoe), substance mass (e.g., ketchup), object mass (e.g., furniture) and two conditions involving items that can occur flexibly in both mass and count contexts (e.g., string/strings). The last two conditions specifically probe learners’ ability to make use of morphosyntax in deriving semantics. The representation of quantity for objects/substance was manipulated for number or combined volume (e.g., two large shoes/portions of ketchup versus six tiny shoes/portions of ketchup). Participants were asked to make judgments on the quantity of items, in response to questions presented in a count and/or mass frame (Who has more shoes/ketchup/furniture/string/strings?). Results show that our bilingual participants were able to make appropriate semantic judgments of quantity in response to manipulation of morphosyntax. We compare our findings with previous research in first and second language contexts and discuss the differences in terms of the quantity and quality of input in shaping learners’ grammar system.

Dealing with interference: Chimpanzees respond to conflicting cues in a food-choice memory task.

Interference effects emerge when responding on the basis of task-relevant features is directly pitted against task-irrelevant cues that could lead to errors. To study potential interference effects in a food-choice memory test, 3 chimpanzees were presented with conflicting information in a magnitude judgment task. In Experiment 1, chimpanzees were presented with an ordinal series of colored containers that they sequenced on the basis of relative preference for the different foods that were consistently hidden under the containers. Chimpanzees also were presented with a relative quantity judgment task in which they saw identical containers cover different amounts of a consistent food type. Then, the ordinal and quantity tasks were combined such that the colored containers from the ordinal task were used as covers for the consistent food type from the quantity task. This created instances of congruency (e.g., a highly preferred colored container placed over the largest food quantity) and incongruency (e.g., a highly preferred colored container placed over a small food quantity) between task-relevant and task-irrelevant features. Interference effects were evident when chimpanzees responded on the basis of task-irrelevant features (i.e., container value) rather than task-relevant features (i.e., food quantity), sometimes leading to suboptimal responses in incongruent trial types. Chimpanzees also demonstrated some evidence of the cognitive control needed to inhibit responding based solely on the learned values of the containers. (PsycINFO Database Record

Capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) treat small and large numbers of items similarly during a relative quantity judgment task.

A key issue in understanding the evolutionary and developmental emergence of numerical cognition is to learn what mechanism(s) support perception and representation of quantitative information. Two such systems have been proposed, one for dealing with approximate representation of sets of items across an extended numerical range and another for highly precise representation of only small numbers of items. Evidence for the first system is abundant across species and in many tests with human adults and children, whereas the second system is primarily evident in research with children and in some tests with non-human animals. A recent paper (Choo & Franconeri, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 21, 93-99, 2014) with adult humans also reported "superprecise" representation of small sets of items in comparison to large sets of items, which would provide more support for the presence of a second system in human adults. We first presented capuchin monkeys with a test similar to that of Choo and Franconeri in which small or large sets with the same ratios had to be discriminated. We then presented the same monkeys with an expanded range of comparisons in the small number range (all comparisons of 1-9 items) and the large number range (all comparisons of 10-90 items in 10-item increments). Capuchin monkeys showed no increased precision for small over large sets in making these discriminations in either experiment. These data indicate a difference in the performance of monkeys to that of adult humans, and specifically that monkeys do not show improved discrimination performance for small sets relative to large sets when the relative numerical differences are held constant.

Grammatical and pragmatic properties of the DP in children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) and in children with High Functioning Autism (HFA)

This study investigates whether grammar and pragmatics are separate linguistic components or not, and whether children with SLI and children with HFA have overlapping or distinct linguistic profiles. We examine two DP-related phenomena: the mass-count distinction (grammatical) and the choice for a definite/indefinite article (pragmatic). We tested 27 children with HFA aged 6–14, age and gender matched to 27 children with SLI, and 27 TD controls on a Quantity Judgment Task (mass-count) and an Elicited Production Task (article choice). Our results show that pragmatics can be impaired independently from grammar (in HFA) and vice versa (in SLI), providing evidence for a modular view of grammar and pragmatics, and against an overlap in the profiles of SLI and HFA.

The elusive illusion: Do children (Homo sapiens) and capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) see the Solitaire illusion?

One approach to gaining a better understanding of how we perceive the world is to assess the errors that human and nonhuman animals make in perceptual processing. Developmental and comparative perspectives can contribute to identifying the mechanisms that underlie systematic perceptual errors often referred to as perceptual illusions. In the visual domain, some illusions appear to remain constant across the lifespan, whereas others change with age. From a comparative perspective, many of the illusions observed in humans appear to be shared with nonhuman primates. Numerosity illusions are a subset of visual illusions and occur when the spatial arrangement of stimuli within a set influences the perception of quantity. Previous research has found one such illusion that readily occurs in human adults, the Solitaire illusion. This illusion appears to be less robust in two monkey species, rhesus macaques and capuchin monkeys. We attempted to clarify the ontogeny of this illusion from a developmental and comparative perspective by testing human children and task-naïve capuchin monkeys in a computerized quantity judgment task. The overall performance of the monkeys suggested that they perceived the numerosity illusion, although there were large differences among individuals. Younger children performed similarly to the monkeys, whereas older children more consistently perceived the illusion. These findings suggest that human-unique perceptual experiences with the world might play an important role in the emergence of the Solitaire illusion in human adults, although other factors also may contribute.

Does Mass Count Anymore?

The theoretical literature on the mass/count distinction in Palestinian-Arabic (PA) is extremely scarce, and the psycholinguistic perspective has never been explored. In this paper, we report results from an experiment exploring the mass/count distinction in 48 (aged 6;6–17;04) young and adult speakers of PA. Using an adaptation of Barner & Snedeker’s (2005) Quantity-Judgment task, we show that while PA-speaking adults are essentially identical to English-speaking adults, PA-speaking children behave dramatically different from both adult PA speakers and from English-acquiring children. We suggest that these results may reflect a process of language change currently taking place in PA. We further propose two possible sources for the process. The first involves the fact that the grammaticization of mass/count in PA is rather marginal, as indicated by the relative paucity of syntactic structures encoding the distinction. Alternatively, our data may reflect a change process involving a relaxation of obligatory number-marking in cardinality contexts. Finally, we outline a research-program aimed to test these hypotheses.

What counts for ‘counting’? Chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes, respond appropriately to relevant and irrelevant information in a quantity judgment task

Nonhuman animals quantify all manner of things, and the way in which this is done is fairly well understood. However, little research has been conducted to determine how they know what is or is not relevant in the instances in which they quantify stimuli. We assessed how four chimpanzees chose between two sets of food items when the items were distributed across separate spatial arrays. Each item was covered by a container, and then was revealed in sequence so that neither whole set was visible at one time. After all containers were revealed, some were revealed again. The chimpanzees should have ignored items that were seen a second time and instead enumerated each item only once. In another test, some of the items were transposed in location and then uncovered again. Here, the chimpanzees needed to recognize that the newly shown food items were ones they already had seen. Overall, the chimpanzees were successful in selecting the truly larger array of items despite these potential distracting re-presentations of items. Discrimination performance also reflected analogue magnitude estimation because comparisons of sets that differed by larger amounts were easier than comparisons that differed by smaller amounts. Thus, chimpanzee quantity judgments for nonvisible sets of items are inexact, but they include an aspect of control for determining when items are uniquely presented versus re-presented.

Comparing children’s Homo sapiens and chimpanzees’ Pan troglodytes quantity judgments of sequentially presented sets of items

Abstract We presented a quantity judgment task that involved comparing two sequentially presented sets of items to preschoolers and chimpanzees using nearly identical procedures that excluded verbal instructions to children. Trial difficulty in this task reflected the ratio difference between sets of discrete items where larger ratios (e.g., 0.80 as from comparing 4 to 5) were more difficult than smaller ones (e.g., 0.50 as from comparing 4 to 8). Children also completed verbal-based tasks probing the relationship between counting proficiency and performance on the quantity judgment task of sequentially presented identical sized items. Both species’ performance was best when ratios between comparison sets were small regardless of set size in all types of tasks. Generally, chimpanzees and older children performed better than younger children except at larger ratios. Children’s counting proficiency was not related to success in choosing the larger of two quantities of identical-sized items. These results indicate that chimpanzees and children share an approximate number sense that is reflected through analog magnitude estimation when comparing quantities.

Evidence for direct retrieval of relative quantity information in a quantity judgment task: Decimals, integers, and the role of physical similarity.

Participants' reaction times (RTs) in numerical judgment tasks in which one must determine which of 2 numbers is greater generally follow a monotonically decreasing function of the numerical distance between the two presented numbers. Here, I present 3 experiments in which the relative influences of numerical distance and physical similarity are assessed in just such a task using integers and decimals as stimuli. The data reveal that numerical distance is the primary feature controlling participants' RTs when integers are presented. However, the physical similarity between the decade place of the standard and the probe is the primary feature controlling participants' RTs when decimals are presented. I conclude that the unique qualities of decimals do not lend themselves to share the place-coding representation of integers, thus a direct retrieval mechanism for judging the relative quantity of decimals has developed.

Quantity judgments of sequentially presented food items by capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella)

Recent assessments have shown that capuchin monkeys, like chimpanzees and other Old World primate species, are sensitive to quantitative differences between sets of visible stimuli. In the present study, we examined capuchins' performance in a more sophisticated quantity judgment task that required the ability to form representations of food quantities while viewing the quantities only one piece at a time. In three experiments, we presented monkeys with the choice between two sets of discrete homogeneous food items and allowed the monkeys to consume the set of their choice. In Experiments 1 and 2, monkeys compared an entirely visible food set to a second set, presented item-by-item into an opaque container. All monkeys exhibited high accuracy in choosing the larger set, even when the entirely visible set was presented last, preventing the use of one-to-one item correspondence to compare quantities. In Experiment 3, monkeys compared two sets that were each presented item-by-item into opaque containers, but at different rates to control for temporal cues. Some monkeys performed well in this experiment, though others exhibited near-chance performance, suggesting that this species' ability to form representations of food quantities may be limited compared to previously tested species such as chimpanzees. Overall, these findings support the analog magnitude model of quantity representation as an explanation for capuchin monkeys' quantification of sequentially presented food items.

Rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) succeed on a computerized test designed to assess conservation of discrete quantity

Conservation of quantity occurs through recognition that changes in the physical arrangement of a set of items do not change the quantity of items in that set. Rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) were presented with a computerized quantity judgment task. Monkeys were rewarded for selecting the greater quantity of items in one of two horizontal arrays of items on the screen. On some trials, after a correct selection, no reward was given but one of the arrays was manipulated. In some cases, this manipulation involved moving items closer together or farther apart to change the physical arrangement of the array without changing the quantity of items in the array. In other cases, additional items were added to the initially smaller array so that it became quantitatively larger. Monkeys then made another selection from the two rows of items. Monkeys were sensitive to these manipulations, changing their selections when the number of items in the rows changed but not when the arrangement only was changed. Therefore, monkeys responded on the basis of the quantity of items, and they were not distracted by non-quantitative manipulations of the sets.

Spontaneous use of magnitude discrimination and ordination by the orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus).

The ability to discriminate quantity is descriptive of general cognitive ability. In this study, the authors presented 2 orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus) with a quantity judgment task. Each trial consisted of 2 choices, ranging from 1 to 6 food items in each. The orangutan chose 1 of the quantities, which was removed, and the remaining array was given as a reward. In contrast to chimpanzees previously tested on the same task (S. T. Boysen & G. G. Berntson, 1995; S. T. Boysen, G. G. Berntson, M. B. Hannan, & J. T. Cacioppo, 1996; S. T. Boysen, K. L. Mukobi, & G. G. Berntson, 1999), the orangutans optimized their performance. Orangutans, therefore, attend to differences in magnitude and can spontaneously use ordinality. Results also suggest a cognitive difference between chimpanzees and orangutans.