Cognitive reference point

Reporter : SherryProfessor : Daphne Yuan

Rosch

• Focal Colors• Line orientation• Numbers

Focal Colors

• People across cultures consistently choose focal colors(i.e. basic colors) as prototypes.

• Shows that certain colors are salient in people’s mind.

Which slices look like they could be composed of two or more colors ?

Line orientation

• vertical, horizontal, and diagonal lines would serve as reference orientations.

The results in this domain were less uniform than in the case of color.

Numbers

• expected multiples of 10 to fulfill the CRP function.

10 50 100 100017 36 164 1027

The top one is faster to into to people’s mind

Elaborations of the Roschean model

• This section briefly reviews some of the relevant studies in cognitive and social psychology, behavioral economics, marketing and management research.

Similarity judgments• It is the most straightforward application of the Roschean CRP

model• People usually have one preferred direction of comparison.

They usually compare a less prominent item to a more prominent item (CRP).

Similarity judgments• Example (Tversky, 1977) :

• A CRP-item is preferred in the base-position (i.e. standard of comparison), whereas a non-CRP element is generally used as a target of comparison.

North Korea is similar to China China is similar to North Korea

is similar to

Similarity judgments• Example (Tversky, 1977) :

• A CRP-item is preferred in the base-position (i.e. standard of comparison), whereas a non-CRP element is generally used as a target of comparison.

North Korea is similar to China China is similar to North Korea

is similar to

Spatial cognition • It were shown to be crucial both in child development and in

the learning of new environments by adults.• For example, When getting to know a new city, people would

usually start by memorizing the most salient points.

Paths develop as elaborations of the landmark network.

Spatial cognition • Locations without a reference point status are usually judged

nearer to spatial reference points than are reference points to non-CRP locations.

• We can tentatively conclude that despite being diverse in form and function, all reference points seem to display the kind of asymmetry.

Judgments of symbolic magnitude• It describes the way people compare two items in terms of

magnitude (e.g. magnitude of digits, size of objects, geo• graphic distances).• The reference point can be indicated explicitly, as in Choose

the stimulus closer to X.

Judgments of symbolic magnitude• For example, it has been argued that the question Which is

larger may trigger the upper bound as a reference point, whereas the question Which is smaller is likely to activate the lower bound to which the stimuli will be compared.

Judgments of symbolic magnitude• Reaction times increase when people have to judge which of

the two large objects is smaller or which of the two small objects is larger.

• This is an instantiation of the so-called semantic congruity effect.

Social judgments • People usually judge others as more similar to themselves.• The subjects in their experiments rated a friend as more

similar to themselves than vice versa.• Social stereotypes usually function as reference points for

making judgements about the self.• However, the self serves as a CRP for social stereotypes with

few known attributes.• Such reference points include beliefs, language, facial

expressions, country of origin and gestures.

Behavioural economics• Kahneman (1992) applied this analysis to the study of

negotiation behavior.• He has shown that depending upon the CRP chosen in

negotiations, people will evaluate the same result as either gain or loss.

• It is therefore possible to change the result of negotiations by manipulating reference points.

marketing aresearch• The notion of a reference point also plays an important role in

marketing research, where it is sometimes called reference price.

• This internal reference price can be adjusted, for instance, by broadening price dispersion or manipulating confidence associated with price expectations

• An unrelated product stored in the short-term memory can affect the decision to buy a target product.

marketing research

• Example : if before buying a cooker you encountered a price of a

BMW, your willingness to pay for the cooker will increase for even an expensive cooker will still be a lot cheaper than a BMW.

willingness to pay ↑

Management studies• Prospect Theory with its inventory of reference points has

also been applied to the studies of human organizational behavior in work settings.

• Goals function as reference points and alter the value of outcomes.

• This explains why people strive harder when they have a specific goal, such as finishing the paper by the end of the month.

Ubiquity of reference-point reasoning

• Reference-point reasoning observed across various kinds of human activity is the asymmetry between reference and non-reference items.

• Given the ubiquity of CRPs, we have reasons to expect that language also involves a lot of reference-point reasoning.

• language is not a separate module, but an integral part of cognition, whose organizing principles from the general properties of the human mind.

Reference-point constructions in Cognitive Grammar

• Possessives• Deixis• Metonymy• Further applications

Possessives

Figure 2.1. Reference-point relation.C – conceptualiser, R – reference point,D – dominion, T – target (Langacker 2001: 21)

a reference point is a cognitively salient item that gives mental access to a less salient target. The set of possible targets that can be accessed through a particular reference point is called dominion.

Possessives

Figure 2.1. Reference-point relation.C – conceptualiser, R –girl,D – dominion, T – neck

Therefore, the girl’s neck is felicitous and the neck’s girl is odd.

Possessives• One of the current topical issues is the status of the reference

point with respect to the target.• An important contribution of the reference-point approach to

the study of possessives is that it provides a unified account of numerous relations expressed by means of a possessive construction. (ownership, kinship, part-whole, agent process, experience-happening relationship)

Topic construction• extends the reference-point model from the analysis of

possessives to a wider range of grammatical phenomena that calls reference-point constructions. One of these is a topic construction.

• Example :Consider the following example from Japanese:(1)sakana wa tai ga oisiifish TOP red.snapper SUBJ delicious

(2) On the table sat a nervous calico cat

Deixis• The function of a deictic word in specifying its referent in a

giving context.

(3) Ted scratched his nose, and so did Jimmy.

(4) # He saw a skunk near Ralph. (5) # Near Ralph, he saw a skunk

anaphoric relation

Pronouns, are usually interpreted in the context of the dominion specified by the nominal subject.

Metonymy• the entity that is normally designated by a metonymic

expression serves as a reference point affording mental access to the desired target.

• (6) She bought Lakoff and Johnson, used and in paper, for just, $1.50

• (7) The dog bit the cat.

• (8) Don is likely to leave.

teeth

Ref. point

easily provide a mental path to a target

Cognitive status of reference-point constructions

• are we dealing with the same cognitive phenomenon or with different phenomena referred to by the same term – reference points?

• In the third place, the crucial feature of a reference-point relationship on both the Roschean and the Langackerian account is the asymmetry between CRPs and non-CRPs.

• In the second place, defined CRPs as cognitively salient items that other items are seen in relation to.

• In the first place, places reference-point constructions in the same group of phenomena.

Reference points in lexical semantics _Round numbers

• Most prominent numbers are likely to be used in approximative expressions, such as There were thirty to forty birds in the tree.

• Approximatives usually involve round numbers, such as 10, 20, 25, 50, and 100.

Reference points in lexical semantics _Spatial vocabularies

• Using the notion of reference points is the investigation of spatial vocabularies.

• Languages differ in how they code the relation between a target object and a reference point.

vanuit : ‘out of’ signals the presence of contact with the reference point at the initial state of the target,

tot bij : ‘until, as far as’ codes resulting proximity without contact

Reference points in lexical semantics _Prototypes

• Prototypes may indeed be taken as a prime example of reference points providing mental access to less salient, non-prototypical entities.

Summary • Cognitive reference points have been shown to play a major

role in various aspects of human cognition.• Despite the growing interest of psychologists in reference-

point reasoning, the notion of CRPs has generated relatively little interest in linguistics.

• In this thesis, I will elaborate the CRP model by extrapolating it to cognitive lexical semantics.