On the complexity of reachability and motion planning questions (extended abstract)
SCG '85 Proceedings of the first annual symposium on Computational geometry
The Language Complexity Game
Computational Complexity and Natural Language
Computational Complexity and Natural Language
Minds and Machines
On the Complexity of Model Checking and Inference in Minimal Models
LPNMR '01 Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Logic Programming and Nonmonotonic Reasoning
Systematic parameterized complexity analysis in computational phonology
Systematic parameterized complexity analysis in computational phonology
Journal of Logic, Language and Information
Vision: A Computational Investigation into the Human Representation and Processing of Visual Information
A Remark on Collective Quantification
Journal of Logic, Language and Information
Computational Complexity: A Modern Approach
Computational Complexity: A Modern Approach
The competence of sub-optimal theories of structure mapping on hard analogies
IJCAI'97 Proceedings of the 15th international joint conference on Artifical intelligence - Volume 1
Interpreting tractable versus intractable reciprocal sentences
IWCS '11 Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Computational Semantics
| Hi-index | 0.00 |
We report two experiments which tested whether cognitive capacities are limited to those functions that are computationally tractable (PTIME-Cognition Hypothesis). In particular, we investigated the semantic processing of reciprocal sentences with generalized quantifiers, i.e., sentences of the form Q dots are directly connected to each other, where Q stands for a generalized quantifier, e.g. all or most. Sentences of this type are notoriously ambiguous and it has been claimed in the semantic literature that the logically strongest reading is preferred (Strongest Meaning Hypothesis). Depending on the quantifier, the verification of their strongest interpretations is computationally intractable whereas the verification of the weaker readings is tractable. We conducted a picture completion experiment and a picture verification experiment to investigate whether comprehenders shift from an intractable reading to a tractable reading which should be dispreferred according to the Strongest Meaning Hypothesis. The results from the picture completion experiment suggest that intractable readings occur in language comprehension. Their verification, however, rapidly exceeds cognitive capacities in case the verification problem cannot be solved using simple heuristics. In particular, we argue that during verification, guessing strategies are used to reduce computational complexity.