Michele (Shelli) Feist | University of Louisiana at Lafayette (original) (raw)

Papers by Michele (Shelli) Feist

Routledge eBooks, May 10, 2022

... In this paper, we raise the following questions as empirical problems with regard to the assi... more ... In this paper, we raise the following questions as empirical problems with regard to the assignment of spatial prepositions in English: Is the geometrical relation between the Figure and the Ground important? ...

Cognitive Science, Jul 1, 2023

Alongside significant gains in our understanding of the human mind, research in Cognitive Science... more Alongside significant gains in our understanding of the human mind, research in Cognitive Science has produced substantial evidence that the details of cognitive processes vary across cultures, contexts, and individuals. In order to arrive at a more nuanced account of the workings of the human mind, in this letter we argue that one challenge for the future of Cognitive Science is the integration of this evidence of variation with findings which can be generalized.

Frontiers in Psychology

How do people talk—and potentially think—about abstract concepts? Supported by abundant linguisti... more How do people talk—and potentially think—about abstract concepts? Supported by abundant linguistic evidence, Conceptual Metaphor Theory posits that people draw upon concrete concepts to structure abstract ones via metaphorical connections. Often, the source domain for a metaphor draws upon embodied physical experience, as in the time is space system, whereby representations in the domain of time are thought to arise from experiences of navigating through, orienting within, and observing motion in space. In recent years, psychological evidence has suggested that the connections between space and time are indeed conceptual; however, many gaps in our understanding of the workings of metaphor remain. Notably, until recently, the unique variations in the ways in which people experience metaphor have been largely overlooked, with much research falling prey to what Dąbrowska has identified as one of the ‘deadly sins’ of cognitive linguistics: to ignore individual differences. By focusing o...

Whether and how much the routine use of language influences thought is a perennially fascinating ... more Whether and how much the routine use of language influences thought is a perennially fascinating question in cognitive science. The current paper addresses this issue by examining whether the presence of spatial language influences the encoding and memory of simple pictures.

Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980) posits that the metaphorical ways in which we... more Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980) posits that the metaphorical ways in which we talk about abstract concepts are indicative of the ways in which we think about those concepts. In a recent test of this hypothesis, Casasanto (2007) considered the metaphor SIMILARITY IS PROXIMITY. He found evidence to suggest that the effect of physical proximity on similarity ratings differs depending on whether the task requires a perceptual or conceptual judgment regarding the similarity of common objects: only for conceptual judgments did Casasanto find that physical proximity increased similarity ratings. We extend this finding, asking whether physical proximity will similarly affect conceptual, but not perceptual, judgments regarding the similarity between two color swatches.

Where it’s at Michele I. Feist (feist@louisiana.edu) Institute of Cognitive Science, University o... more Where it’s at Michele I. Feist (feist@louisiana.edu) Institute of Cognitive Science, University of Louisiana at Lafayette P. O. Drawer 43772, Lafayette, LA 70504 USA functional interaction of the Figure and the Ground (Coventry & Garrod, 2004; Vandeloise, 2003). The results suggest that coincidence of the Figure and Ground (as points) is not a major expectation for scenes described with at, appearing in only 30% of the responses. Likewise, it appears that speakers do not expect the Ground to support the Figure against gravity (support appears in only 48% of responses). In contrast, contact does appear to be expected, occurring in 76% of the responses. In addition, there is an expectation of a functional interaction between the Figure and Ground, as evidenced by the role of functional interaction in 64% of responses. Introduction As adult native speakers of English, our intuitions about the use of spatial prepositions are quick and sure. However, these intuitions involve attention to...

How do children learn the meanings of words? Much research has focused on the initial acquisition... more How do children learn the meanings of words? Much research has focused on the initial acquisition of lexical items, with concomitant attention paid to early processes such as fast mapping (Carey, 1978), in which initial meanings are thought to be based on preexisting conceptual categories. Other research, however, suggests that meanings evolve beyond those represented at the time of initial acquisition, both for verbs (Gentner, 1978) and for nouns naming common artifacts (Andersen, 1975; Ameel, Malt, & Storms, in press). This evolution of meaning is compatible with findings that word meanings in adults are complex (Feist, 2000, in press; Feist & Gentner, 2003). Complexity of meaning is, in turn, compatible with a feature-based view of lexical semantics. What might the evolutionary trajectories of the features look like? Are features added (Clark, 1973), with new features limiting the range of application of the word? Or are they subtracted (Nelson, 1974) as the child modifies his or...

Cadernos de Linguística

Esta pesquisa pretende examinar de que forma os falantes do Português Brasileiro compreendem e in... more Esta pesquisa pretende examinar de que forma os falantes do Português Brasileiro compreendem e interpretam a representação linguístico-visual de cenas locativas, nas quais dois objetos estão dispostos em relações espaciais diferentes. Os participantes da pesquisa foram distribuídos em dois grupos etários (adultos jovens e adultos idosos) e dois níveis de comprometimento cognitivo (idosos com comprometimento cognitivo leve ou moderado devido a provável doença de Alzheimer e pessoas sem comprometimento cognitivo). Para demonstrar uma possível correlação entre o declínio cognitivo dos grupos de idosos e alterações na compreensão linguístico-visual da espacialidade, conduzimos um estudo-piloto sobre a interpretação de cenas espaciais, cuja ambiguidade pode ser resolvida pela adoção de um “Ponto de Vantagem” sobre a relação Figura-Fundo e, consequentemente pela aplicação de um “Frame de Referência” espacial. Ao comparar grupos com idades diferentes, pretendemos monitorar como estes dois ...

Does language influence recognition for spatial scenes? In Experiments 1 and 2, participants view... more Does language influence recognition for spatial scenes? In Experiments 1 and 2, participants viewed ambiguous pictures, with or without spatial sentences. In a yes-no recognition task only the spatial sentences group made more false alarms towards the center of the spatial category than in the other direction; three other comparison groups showed no such tendency. This shift towards the core of the semantic category suggests that spatial language interacted with perceptual information during encoding. Experiment 3 varied the materials to test the above Interactive Encoding account against a Separate Encoding account in which separately stored sentences are accessed during picture recognition. The results support the Interactive Encoding account in which spatial language influences the encoding and memory of spatial relations.

The semantics of spatial terms has attracted substantial attention in the cognitive sciences, rev... more The semantics of spatial terms has attracted substantial attention in the cognitive sciences, revealing both compelling similarities and striking differences across languages. However, much of the evidence regarding cross-linguistic variation pertains to fine-grained comparisons between individual lexical items, while cross-linguistic similarities are found in more coarse-grained studies of the conceptual space underlying semantic systems. We seek to bridge this gap, moving beyond the semantics of individual terms to ask what the comparison of spatial semantic systems may reveal about the conceptualization of locations in English and Mandarin Chinese and about the nature of potential universals in this domain. We subjected descriptions of 116 spatial scenes to multidimensional scaling analyses in order to reveal the structures of the underlying conceptual spaces in each language. In addition to revealing overlaps and divergences in the conceptualization of space in English and Manda...

Talking about space: A cross-linguistic perspective Michele I. Feist (m-feist@ northwestern.edu) ... more Talking about space: A cross-linguistic perspective Michele I. Feist (m-feist@ northwestern.edu) Department of Psychology, Northwestern University 2029 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208 USA stack of Legos would be described by the same term as the act of putting a book into its sleeve: both are instances of tight fit. Further, the act of putting a Lego onto a stack of Legos is distinguished from the act of putting a book onto a desk: while the former is a tight fit relation, the latter represents loose fit. Even closely related languages are not immune from such differences in the distinctions drawn between spatial relational terms. For example, as Bowerman has pointed out (Bowerman, 1996; Bowerman & Pederson, 1992, 1996; Gentner & Bowerman, 2000), Dutch makes a three-way distinction where English does not: between a cup on a table (Dutch op), a picture on a wall (Dutch aan), and a ring on a finger (Dutch om). Even if two languages appear to draw the same distinction, the boundaries...

The Object-Relation Continuum in Language Michele I. Feist (feist@louisiana.edu) Institute of Cog... more The Object-Relation Continuum in Language Michele I. Feist (feist@louisiana.edu) Institute of Cognitive Science, University of Louisiana at Lafayette Lafayette, LA 70504 USA Paula Cifuentes Ferez (paulacf@um.es) Departamento de Filologia Inglesa, Universidad de Murcia Murcia, Spain paraphrased. Afterwards, the paraphrases are presented to a new set of participants whose task is to either paraphrase the paraphrased sentences (Gentner & France, 1988) or to choose the original word from a set of possibilities in a “retrace task” (Fausey et al., 2006; Gentner & France, 1988). Assuming that the less a word’s meaning changes, the more likely it is to be recovered (Gentner & France, 1988), the rate at which the original noun or verb is either produced (in the back-paraphrase task) or chosen (in the retrace task) is taken to be indicative of the extent to which the meaning of the word has remained stable despite the semantic incompatibility of the original sentence. In English, it has been ...

International journal of english studies, Vol, 2007

It has been long noted that Spanish does not license the use of manner verbs when describing teli... more It has been long noted that Spanish does not license the use of manner verbs when describing telic motion events, particularly when they involve boundary crossing (Aske, 1989; Slobin & Hoiting, 1994). The only exception to this constraint seems to be punctual acts, especially vertical boundary crossing situations, such as tirarse a la piscina (lit. ‘throw oneself into the pool’) (Naigles et al., 1998). Slobin (2004, 2006) has pointed out the low salience of manner in Spanish; the Spanish manner verb lexicon is not as extensive and frequently used as that of high manner salient languages like English, and as a result Spanish speakers are thought to attend less to manner than English speakers. In this study, we ask whether Spanish speakers would accept a manner verb in a boundary-crossing event, when manner of motion is made highly salient, either by contextual or by cultural means. Our research, though still preliminary, suggests both contextual manner salience and cultural manner sa...

Linguagem em (Dis)curso, 2016

Do speakers think about the world differently depending on the language they speak? In recent yea... more Do speakers think about the world differently depending on the language they speak? In recent years, this question has generated substantial interest in the cognitive sciences, driven in part by Talmy's (1985; 2000) observations regarding the typology of motion descriptions. However, a flurry of research (CIFUENTES-FEREZ; GENTNER, 2006; GENNARI et al., 2002; NAIGLES; TERRAZAS, 1998; PAPAFRAGOU; HULBERT; TRUESWELL, 2008; among others) has produced mixed results, leaving us no closer to understanding the role of language in motion event cognition. In this paper, I revisit the linguistic analysis, combining Talmy's observations with those of Slobin (2004) to refocus the question on the differential salience of Manner across languages. I then present results from three studies that suggest that cross-linguistic differences in the salience of Manner are connected to speakers' likelihood of encoding Manner information, in line with the Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis.

Rivista Italiana di Filosofia del Linguaggio, Dec 28, 2013

With the introduction of Talmy’s (1985; 2000) typology for the linguistic encoding of motion even... more With the introduction of Talmy’s (1985; 2000) typology for the linguistic encoding of motion events, the domain of motion event cognition has emerged as particularly tractable for the empirical examination of linguistic relativity. The current paper contributes to this literature, focusing on the differential encoding of one aspect of a motion event – manner of motion – and the potential for cognitive differences related to its encoding. When describing motion events, speakers of satellite-framed languages, such as English, have been found to be more likely to encode manner information than are speakers of verb-framed languages, such as Spanish (SLOBIN 2004). Building on this finding, the current study asks whether English speakers also experience lower cognitive costs when accessing manner information than do Spanish speakers. Pushing the connection farther, the study includes a range of manners varying in codability, allowing for a replication of the cross-linguistic correlations between codability and cost as tested within each linguistic population. The findings from both the cross-language comparisons and the within-language comparisons demonstrate a clear connection between codability and cognitive cost, suggesting an influence of language on the thought processes of speakers as they encode the motion events they see.

Cognitive Linguistics, 2015

What factors influence our understanding of metaphoric statements about time? By examining the in... more What factors influence our understanding of metaphoric statements about time? By examining the interpretation of one such statement – namely, Next Wednesday’s meeting has been moved forward by two days – earlier research has demonstrated that people may draw on spatial perspectives, involving multiple spatially based temporal reference strategies, to interpret metaphoric statements about time (e.g. Boroditsky 2000; Kranjec 2006; McGlone and Harding 1998; Núñez et al. 2006). However, what is still missing is an understanding of the role of linguistic factors in the interpretation of temporal statements such as this one. In this paper, we examine the linguistic properties of this famous temporally ambiguous utterance, considered as an instantiation of a more schematic construction. In Experiment 1, we examine the roles of individual lexical items that are used in the utterance in order to better understand the interplay of lexical semantics and constructional meaning in the context of...