Evidence map›Paper›PMID 29990351›Full record

ArticlePloS one2018

Bayesian validation of grammar productions for the language of thought.

Sergio Romano, Alejo Salles, Marie Amalric, Stanislas Dehaene, Mariano Sigman, Santiago Figueira

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in PloS one, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
7citing papers in PubMed, 1 pooled it
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

7 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.

  1. Pooled it
  2. Review
  3. The cultural origins of symbolic number.Psychological review · 2022
    Article
  4. One model for the learning of language.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022
    Article
  5. Article
  6. Article
  7. The Child as Hacker.Trends in cognitive sciences · 2020
    Review
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

6 authors.

Sergio RomanoUniversidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Departamento de Computación. Buenos Aires, Argentina.ORCID 0000-0002-9061-7770
Alejo SallesCONICET-Universidad de Buenos Aires. Instituto de Cálculo (IC). Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Marie AmalricCognitive Neuroimaging Unit, CEA DSV/I2BM, INSERM, Université Paris-Sud, Université Paris-Saclay, NeuroSpin center, 91191 Gif/Yvette, France.
Stanislas DehaeneCognitive Neuroimaging Unit, CEA DSV/I2BM, INSERM, Université Paris-Sud, Université Paris-Saclay, NeuroSpin center, 91191 Gif/Yvette, France.
Mariano SigmanCONICET-Universidad Torcuato Di Tella. Laboratorio de Neurociencia, C1428BIJ. Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Santiago FigueiraUniversidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Departamento de Computación. Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Probabilistic proposals of Language of Thoughts (LoTs) can explain learning across different domains as statistical inference over a compositionally structured hypothesis space. While frameworks may differ on how a LoT may be implemented computationally, they all share the property that they are built from a set of atomic symbols and rules by which these symbols can be combined. In this work we propose an extra validation step for the set of atomic productions defined by the experimenter. It starts by expanding the defined LoT grammar for the cognitive domain with a broader set of arbitrary productions and then uses Bayesian inference to prune the productions from the experimental data. The result allows the researcher to validate that the resulting grammar still matches the intuitive grammar chosen for the domain. We then test this method in the language of geometry, a specific LoT model for geometrical sequence learning. Finally, despite the fact of the geometrical LoT not being a universal (i.e. Turing-complete) language, we show an empirical relation between a sequence's probability and its complexity consistent with the theoretical relationship for universal languages described by Levin's Coding Theorem.

Indexed as

LinguisticsModels, TheoreticalProbability LearningThinkingBayes TheoremCognitionHumans

Identifiers

PMID29990351
PMCPMC6039029

What OpenQuestion holds

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.