scispace - formally typeset
Search or ask a question
Author

Ira A. Noveck

Bio: Ira A. Noveck is an academic researcher from Centre national de la recherche scientifique. The author has contributed to research in topics: Pragmatics & Implicature. The author has an hindex of 26, co-authored 73 publications receiving 3534 citations. Previous affiliations of Ira A. Noveck include École Polytechnique & New York University.


Papers
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Experimental investigations of scalar implicature reveal a consistent ordering in which representations of weak scalar terms tend to be treated logically by young competent participants and more pragmatically by older ones.

636 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors showed that participants are less accurate and take significantly longer to answer correctly when instructions call for a Some but not all interpretation rather than a Some and possibly all interpretation, and that the rate of scalar inferences increased as permitted response time did.

436 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: For instance, the authors found that 9-year-olds are more likely than adults to consider true statements such as Some turtles are in... when compared to the negative None when presented to adults.
Abstract: Much developmental work has been devoted to scalar implicatures. These are implicitly communicated propositions linked to relatively weak terms (consider how Some pragmatically implies Not all) that are more likely to be carried out by adults than by children. Children tend to retain the linguistically encoded meaning of these terms (wherein Some is compatible with All). In three experiments, we gauge children's performance with scalars while investigating four factors that can have an effect on implicature production: (i) the role of (the presence or absence of) distractor items; (ii) the nature of the task (verbal judgments versus action-based judgments); (iii) the choice of scalar expression (the French quantifier quelques versus certains); and (iv) the type of scale that contextualizes the weak utterance (the affirmative All versus the negative None). Experiment 1 replicated earlier findings showing that 9-year-olds are more likely than adults to consider as true statements such as Some turtles are in...

234 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This work employs Evoked Potential techniques as 19 participants are confronted with sentences that have the potential to produce scalar implicature production, like in Some elephants have trunks, to show that implicatures are part of a late-arriving, effort-demanding decision process.

234 citations

Book ChapterDOI
01 Jan 2007
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors illustrate what can be done with experimental approaches to pragmatic issues by considering one example, the case of so-called "scalar inferences", where the experimental method has helped sharpen a theoretical debate and provided uniquely relevant evidence.
Abstract: Although a few pioneers in psycholinguistics had taken an experimental approach to various pragmatic issues for more than twenty years, it is only in the past few years that investigators have begun using experimental methods to test pragmatic hypotheses (see Noveck and Sperber 2004). We see this emergence of a proper experimental pragmatics as an important advance, with great potential for further development. In this chapter we want to illustrate what can be done with experimental approaches to pragmatic issues by considering one example, the case of so-called ‘scalar inferences’, where the experimental method has helped sharpen a theoretical debate and provided uniquely relevant evidence. We will focus on work done by the first author and his collaborators, or work closely related to theirs, but other authors have also made important contributions to the topic (e.g. Papafragou and Musolino 2003; Guasti, Chiercha, Crain, Foppolo, Gualmini and Meroni 2005; De Neys and Schaeken 2007).

176 citations


Cited by
More filters
01 Jan 2009

7,241 citations

Book
01 Jul 2002
TL;DR: In this article, a review is presented of the book "Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment, edited by Thomas Gilovich, Dale Griffin, and Daniel Kahneman".
Abstract: A review is presented of the book “Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment,” edited by Thomas Gilovich, Dale Griffin, and Daniel Kahneman.

3,642 citations

01 Mar 1999

3,234 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined the implica- tions of individual differences in performance for each of the four explanations of the normative/descriptive gap, including performance errors, computational limitations, the wrong norm being applied by the experi- menter, and a different construal of the task by the subject.
Abstract: Much research in the last two decades has demon- strated that human responses deviate from the performance deemed normative according to various models of decision mak- ing and rational judgment (e.g., the basic axioms of utility theory). This gap between the normative and the descriptive can be inter- preted as indicating systematic irrationalities in human cognition. However, four alternative interpretations preserve the assumption that human behavior and cognition is largely rational. These posit that the gap is due to (1) performance errors, (2) computational limitations, (3) the wrong norm being applied by the experi- menter, and (4) a different construal of the task by the subject. In the debates about the viability of these alternative explanations, attention has been focused too narrowly on the modal response. In a series of experiments involving most of the classic tasks in the heuristics and biases literature, we have examined the implica- tions of individual differences in performance for each of the four explanations of the normative/descriptive gap. Performance er- rors are a minor factor in the gap; computational limitations un- derlie non-normative responding on several tasks, particularly those that involve some type of cognitive decontextualization. Un- expected patterns of covariance can suggest when the wrong norm is being applied to a task or when an alternative construal of the task should be considered appropriate.

3,068 citations

Book ChapterDOI
01 Jul 2002
TL;DR: The program of research now known as the heuristics and biases approach began with a survey of 84 participants at the 1969 meetings of the Mathematical Psychology Society and the American Psychological Association (Tversky & Kahneman, 1971) as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: The program of research now known as the heuristics and biases approach began with a survey of 84 participants at the 1969 meetings of the Mathematical Psychology Society and the American Psychological Association (Tversky & Kahneman, 1971). The respondents, including several authors of statistics texts, were asked realistic questions about the robustness of statistical estimates and the replicability of research results. The article commented tongue-in-heek on the prevalence of a belief that the law of large numbers applies to small numbers as well: Respondents placed too much confidence in the results of small samples, and their statistical judgments showed little sensitivity to sample size. The mathematical psychologists who participated in the survey not only should have known better – they did know better. Although their intuitive guesses were off the mark, most of them could have computed the correct answers on the back of an envelope. These sophisticated individuals apparently had access to two distinct approaches for answering statistical questions: one that is spontaneous, intuitive, effortless, and fast; and another that is deliberate, rule-governed, effortful, and slow. The persistence of large biases in the guesses of experts raised doubts about the educability of statistical intuitions. Moreover, it was known that the same biases affect choices in the real world, where researchers commonly select sample sizes that are too small to provide a fair test of their hypotheses (Cohen, 1969, 1992).

2,740 citations