Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Negation is a complex, abstract concept, despite the ubiquityof words like “no” and “not” in even young children’s speech.One challenging aspect to words like “no” and “not” is thatthese words can serve many functions in speech, giving ustools to express an array of concepts such as denial, refusal,and nonexistence. Is there a single concept of “negation” thatunites these separate negative functions – and if so, doesunderstanding this concept require the structure of humanlanguage? In this paper we present a study demonstrating thatadults spontaneously identify a concept of negation in theabsence of explicit verbal instructions, even when theexemplars of negation are perceptually varied and representmany different functions of negation. Furthermore, tying upparticipants’ language ability using verbal shadowing impairsparticipants’ ability to identify a concept of negation, but doesnot impair participants’ ability to identify an equally complexcontrol concept (natural kinds). We discuss our findings inlight of theories regarding the representation of negation andthe relationship between language and thought.