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Grounding compositional symbols: no composition without discrimination

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Abstract

The classical computational conception of meaning has been challenged by the idea that symbols must be grounded on sensorimotor processes. A difficult question arises from the fact that grounding representations cannot be symbolic themselves but, in order to support compositionality, should work as primitives. This implies that they should be precisely identifiable and strictly connected with discriminable perceptual features. Ideally, each representation should correspond to a single discriminable feature. The present study was aimed at exploring whether feature discrimination is a fundamental requisite for grounding compositional symbols. We studied this problem by using Integral stimuli, composed of two interacting and not separable features. Such stimuli were selected in Experiment 1 as pictures whose component features are easily or barely discriminable (Separable or Integral) on the basis of psychological distance metrics (City-block or Euclidean) computed from similarity judgments. In Experiment 2, either each feature was associated with one word of a two-word expression, or the whole stimulus with a single word. In Experiment 3, the procedure was reversed and words or expressions were associated with whole pictures or separate features. Results support the hypothesis that single words are best grounded by Integral stimuli and composite expressions by Separable stimuli, where a strict association of single words with discriminated features is possible.

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Notes

  1. Compositionality, like symbol grounding, is also a fundamental issue in cognitive science. Formal languages used in logic and computer science are typically compositional, and the philosophical discussion on how the parts of an utterance contribute to the overall significance is still in the foreground (Horwich 2005; Werning 2005; Pagin 2003).

  2. Also in Barsalou's perspective, primitives do not coincide with static features identified once for all and then combined (Schyns et al. 1998, endorse a similar position for this respect). Views contrasting the classical account, and supporting perceptual composition, then, don't need to suppose perceptual discrimination as a starting step for identifying elements to be composed. A sort of "composition without discrimination" is assumed. A functional composition (Van Gelder 1990), for example, would be based on interacting features, or micro-features, that need not to be represented separately.

  3. In a previous study (Greco and Caneva 2010) we used a similar procedure associating nonsense words to motor patterns. In this study, in the compositional condition the first words were associated with arm trajectories and the second words with hand postures; in the holistic condition single words were associated to whole patterns. We found that the group in the compositional condition performed better than the holistic one, only when the feature relevant for composition (hand posture) was clearly discriminable and critical for distinguishing between motor patterns. This result appears to support the idea that sensorimotor discrimination is a preliminary step for composition.

  4. The Münsell system (Münsell 1905) classifies all the colors on the basis of three dimensions: Hue, Value (brightness) and Chroma (saturation). The figures here indicated are referred to the system used in the Microsoft Office PowerPoint ® program, ranging from 0 to 255. For example, stimulus 1 had hue = 170 (fixed), brightness = 80 and saturation = 100, corresponding to R = 49, G = 49, B = 111 in the RGB color code, and, in Münsell system, Hue = 6.86, Value = 1.49, Chroma = 9.28.

  5. Such distance (dissimilarity) values were calculated as the complement to 10 of similarity judgments actually obtained in the experiment on the scale from 1 to 10.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Claudio Caneva for his indispensable help and to Simona Garofalo for valuable suggestions. This study was supported by European Union grant FP7-ICT-2007-1, as part of the research program I-TALK.

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  1. Laboratory of Psychology and Cognitive Sciences, University of Genoa, Via Balbi 6, 16126, Genoa, Italy

    Alberto Greco & Elena Carrea

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  1. Alberto Greco
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  2. Elena Carrea
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Correspondence to Elena Carrea.

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Greco, A., Carrea, E. Grounding compositional symbols: no composition without discrimination. Cogn Process 13, 139–150 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-011-0427-7

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