Experimental Evidence for Quantum Structure in Cognition

DOI10.1007/978-3-642-00834-4_7MaRDI QIDQ3616554zbMATH OpenOpenAlexDBLPWikidataFDO

Authors Diederik Aerts, Sven Aerts, Liane Gabora

Publication date 26 March 2009

Published in Quantum Interaction (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/0810.5290

Quantum measurement theory, state operations, state preparations (81P15) Cognitive psychology (91E10)

Abstract: We proof a theorem that shows that a collection of experimental data of membership weights of items with respect to a pair of concepts and its conjunction cannot be modeled within a classical measure theoretic weight structure in case the experimental data contain the effect called overextension. Since the effect of overextension, analogue to the well-known guppy effect for concept combinations, is abundant in all experiments testing weights of items with respect to pairs of concepts and their conjunctions, our theorem constitutes a no-go theorem for classical measure structure for common data of membership weights of items with respect to concepts and their combinations. We put forward a simple geometric criterion that reveals the non classicality of the membership weight structure and use experimentally measured membership weights estimated by subjects in experiments to illustrate our geometrical criterion. The violation of the classical weight structure is similar to the violation of the well-known Bell inequalities studied in quantum mechanics, and hence suggests that the quantum formalism and hence the modeling by quantum membership weights can accomplish what classical membership weights cannot do.

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