Spalding Thomas L, Gagné Christina L, Nisbet Kelly A, Chamberlain Jenna M, Libben Gary
Department of Psychology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada.
Department of Linguistics and Languages, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada.
Front Psychol. 2019 Jul 9;10:1570. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01570. eCollection 2019.
Three experiments investigate how people infer properties of compound words from the unmodified head. Concepts license inference of properties true of the concept to instances or sub-types of that concept: Knowing that birds generally fly, one infers that a new type of bird flies. However, different names are also believed to reflect real underlying differences. Hence, a different name creates the expectation that a new bird differs from birds in general, and this might impact property inference. In these experiments, participants were told, Almost all (Some, Almost no) birds have sesamoid bones, and then asked, What percentage of blackbirds (birds) have sesamoid bones? The results indicate both inference and contrast effects. People infer properties as less common of the compound than the head when the property is true of the head, but they infer them as more common of the compound than the head when the property is not true of the head. In addition, inferences about properties true of the head are affected by the semantic similarity between the head and the compound, but properties not true of the head do not show any semantic similarity effect, but only a small, consistent effect of contrast. Finally, the presentation format (Open vs. Closed compounds) affects the pattern of effects only when the spacing suggests the existence of a permanent name.
三项实验研究了人们如何从未经修饰的词头推断复合词的属性。概念允许将适用于该概念的属性推断到该概念的实例或子类型上：知道鸟类一般会飞，就会推断出一种新型鸟类也会飞。然而，不同的名称也被认为反映了实际存在的潜在差异。因此，一个不同的名称会让人预期一种新鸟类与一般的鸟类有所不同，而这可能会影响属性推断。在这些实验中，参与者被告知“几乎所有（一些，几乎没有）鸟类都有籽骨”，然后被问到“黑鹂（鸟类）中有籽骨的比例是多少？”结果显示了推断和对比效应。当属性适用于词头时，人们会推断该属性在复合词中不如在词头中常见，但当属性不适用于词头时，他们会推断该属性在复合词中比在词头中更常见。此外，关于适用于词头的属性的推断会受到词头与复合词之间语义相似性的影响，但不适用于词头的属性则没有显示出任何语义相似性效应，只有一个小的、一致的对比效应。最后，呈现格式（开放复合词与封闭复合词）仅在空格暗示存在一个固定名称时才会影响效应模式。
