Abstract
People use conjunctions and disjunctions of concepts in ways that violate the rules of classical logic, such as the law of compositionality. Specifically, they overextend conjunctions of concepts, a phenomenon referred to as the Guppy Effect. We build on previous efforts to develop a quantum model [1,2,3], that explains the Guppy Effect in terms of interference. Using a well-studied data set with 16 exemplars that exhibit the Guppy Effect, we developed a 17-dimensional complex Hilbert space \({\cal H}\) that models the data and demonstrates the relationship between overextension and interference. We view the interference effect as, not a logical fallacy on the conjunction, but a signal that out of the two constituent concepts, a new concept has emerged.
Keywords
- theory of concepts
- quantum cognition
- Guppy effect
- concept combination
- interference
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Aerts, D., Broekaert, J., Gabora, L., Veloz, T. (2012). The Guppy Effect as Interference. In: Busemeyer, J.R., Dubois, F., Lambert-Mogiliansky, A., Melucci, M. (eds) Quantum Interaction. QI 2012. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7620. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-35659-9_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-35659-9_4
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
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