Cognition

How do people rapidly judge numerosity-the number of objects in a scene? Theories of human numerical judgements are constrained by the behavioural patterns emerging when people estimate numerosity, such as exact enumeration of small sets, underestimation of large sets, and scalar variability. Current computational models capture how properties of stimulus representations can lead to characteristi…

Non-symbolic numerical competence, supported by the approximate number system (ANS), is widespread across animals, yet it remains unclear whether similar numerical performance reflects shared cognitive mechanisms. We compared two rhesus monkeys and two carrion crows on an extended delayed match-to-numerosity task. Animals viewed a sample numerosity (one to four), maintained it across a delay, and…

Languages differ in their phonotactics - the restrictions on positions and sequencing of segments. Many phonotactic restrictions are specific to a given language, and therefore must be learned from the input infants receive. First, we used data from adult experiments to identify maximally contrastive segmental regularities in English. Then, in three infant experiments, we showed that sensitivity …

Natural languages share common properties called universals. In the domain of quantification, three semantic universals were discovered: monotonicity (convexity), quantity, and conservativity. Researchers have been trying to explain the origin of semantic universals for decades. In this study, we tested one of the proposed explanations, the learnability hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, q…

Human cultures differ in how they think about space: some primarily use egocentric frames of reference, thinking about space in relation to the body, while others privilege geocentric frames, thinking about space in relation to the environment. The origins of this cognitive diversity remain largely unknown. Here, we provide evidence suggesting an ongoing shift in spatial thinking-but not language…

Speech perception is thought to draw on multiple abilities, including both domain-general (perceptual, cognitive, motoric) and speech-specific (categorization) processes, yet it remains unclear how individual learners differ across these dimensions and how such differences shape language learning outcomes. This study examined 123 Chinese learners of English to investigate different facets of pitc…

Infants exploit the syntactic context verbs appear in to guide verb learning: a mechanism known as syntactic bootstrapping. However, it remains unclear whether infants' bootstrapping representations are achieved by matching the number of nouns in a sentence to the number of participants in an event, or by exploiting a more specific mapping between syntactic positions and thematic roles. To invest…

Visual perception arises from the interplay of the fast, feedforward sweep of information processing and a slower, recurrent processing that refines and stabilizes perceptual representations. In this study, we investigated how foveal and parafoveal masks, aimed to disrupt re-entrant visual processing, interact with peripherally presented vernier targets. Participants performed a vernier discrimin…

Statistical learning (SL), the ability to extract recurrent patterns from sensory input, plays an important role in a range of cognitive functions. While much research has studied SL in stable artificial environments, natural inputs are rarely fixed: regularities are often probabilistic and continuously changing. A key question, therefore, is how SL unfolds under such conditions and to what exten…