Adults seem to follow a Maximal Commitment strategy Participants: 30 Italian speaking adults Task & Procedure Truth Value Judgement Task Visual World Paradigm -- Eye Link Target Sentences + 48 Controls + fillers Target Sentence: The Adj X is the only one that is doing P Type of Adj: scalar (big/small) OR non-scalar (color) T: Minimal Commitment F: Maximal Commitment Controls : All/None of the (Adj) Xs are doing P Type I: maximal exploration (more than one quadrant) Three (Adj) Xs are doing P Type II: minimal exploration (only one quadrant) The big elephant is the only one that is playing guitar Crain, Ni & Conway 1994 ADULTS: True the big elephant is the only ELEPHANT that is playing guitar CHILDREN: False the big elephant is the only ANIMAL that is playing guitar. EXPERIMENT 2 EXPERIMENT 1 MINIMAL COMMITMENT STRATEGY & PARSIMONY Choose the interpretation that has more chances of being true to avoid costly and unnecessary commitments MAXIMAL COMMITMENT STRATEGY Choose the strongest interpretation to avoid a “learnability problem” The small square is the only one that is a policeman Participants: 113 Italian adults Task & Procedure Questionnaire like Crain et al.’s Given a sentence, provide a context in which it is false 3 Lists varying the richness of “information” provided: Sentence: The black kitten is the only one that is sleeping List 1 (no context) List 2 (poor context added before sentence) In the pet shop, the black kitten… List 3 (rich context added before sentence) In the pet shop, there are kittens, puppies and hamsters. The black kitten … PA=parsimonious responses e.g. not only the black kitten but the white kitten too IL= responses mentioning the same individual-level e.g. not the black kitten but the white kitten NP=non-parsimonious responses e.g. the puppy too SO= responses mentioning the superorder category e.g. not the black kitten but the puppy However:  The TASK for children and adult was different: presence vs. absence of a given context.  Without a given context, the Minimal Commitment Strategy (select the weakest interpretation) & Parsimony (posit as few entities as possible) both converge on the same interpretation:  the only ELEPHANT RESULTS Behavioral: adults reject the target sentence 90% of the times (no effect of Adjective is found: z=0.68, p=.499 ) Exploration pattern: critical sentences halfway in between controls (vs. type 1: pMCMC=.0012; vs. type II: pMCMC=.0001) We need a way to tease apart the Minimal Commitment strategy and Parsimony You are the only one: how far do we go in search for referents? Francesca Foppolo*, Luisa Meroni #, Marco Marelli* & Andrea Gualmini # *University of Milano-Bicocca, # Utrecht University WHAT PRINCIPLE GUIDES ADULTS? T he poorer the context, the less often adults posit superorder entities; the richer the context, the greater the tendency to mention a superorder category. (List 1 vs. List 3: z=3.354, p= ) RESULTS CONCLUSIONS When no context is given, adults follow Parsimony. When a context is given, adults seem to follow a Maximal Commitment Strategy This work was (partially) supported by the European Science Foundation (Euro-Xprag) and by a VIDI grant from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) to Andrea Gualmini. us! -