Anderson Colloquium Speaker Series

Dr. Marjorie Rhodes

New York University

March 05, 2026

Crick Conference

Generalization in Language and Thought

Generic language—statements that refer to categories as abstract kinds rather than to particular individuals—provides a powerful window into how generalization operates in language and thought. In this talk, I argue that generics systematically shape children’s beliefs about categories not because of the information they convey about category members, but because of how they invite categories to be represented. Children treat generic statements as signals that a category supports broad, stable generalizations, leading them to attribute coherence and non-accidental structure to categories even when the stated content is uninformative or runs counter to kind-based reasoning. I propose that these effects are robust because generic language maps naturally onto default representational structures in cognition, allowing linguistic generalizations to be readily taken up by systems of reasoning and memory. More broadly, this work illustrates how conceptual development reflects the interplay between language and the mind’s underlying representational biases.

Dr. Bonnie Nozari

Indiana University

April 02, 2026

Crick Conference

Dr. Janice Chen

John Hopkins University

May 07, 2026

Crick Conference