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Don't shoot the giant whose shoulders we are standing on

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2017

Jan P. de Ruiter
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Tufts University, Medford, MA 02155. jp.deruiter@tufts.eduhttps://ase.tufts.edu/psychology/people/de_ruiter/
Laura E. de Ruiter
Affiliation:
LuCiD, School of Health Sciences, University of Manchester, M13 9PL Manchester, United Kingdom. laura.deruiter@manchester.ac.ukhttp://www.lucid.ac.uk/who-we-are/our-people/researchers/laura-de-ruiter/

Abstract

Structural priming is a sufficient but not a necessary condition for proving the existence of representations. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Cognitive science relies on the legitimacy of positing representations and processes without “proving” every component. Also, psycholinguistics relies on other methods, including acceptability judgments, to find the materials for priming experiments in the first place.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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