As a young French master’s student who was not very comfortable with English, reading Larry’s seminal 1999 paper was quite a challenge. It was neither the shortest nor the easiest paper to digest, yet it profoundly influenced my academic journey. This work was decisive in choosing the direction of my master’s thesis, and it shaped […]
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A harsh review can sometimes feel like a wrecking ball to one’s work, and, as academic lore has it, it’s often ‘Reviewer 2’ who wields the ball. However, a critical review I received in the late 1990s became a turning point in my research, thanks to Larry Barsalou’s (1999) groundbreaking article on perceptual symbol systems. […]
When you are as thoughtful, intellectually curious, and gracious as Larry Barsalou is, you can inspire others without even knowing it. While I have never been lucky enough to work with Larry closely as a mentee or a colleague, my career would not be what it is today without his personal influence. To understand Larry’s […]
I am extremely happy to be part of a tribute for Larry Barsalou. Having worked on word meaning, concepts, and related issues for a number of years, Larry’s ideas have strongly influenced me, just like they continue to influence a large number of young and older researchers. Larry’s work on ad hoc concepts, embodied/grounded cognition, […]
Larry Barsalou is brilliant. In my view, he made one of the most important scientific discoveries in the modern era of psychological science: ad hoc concepts. It is not hyperbole to say that my own scientific efforts, in part, owe their existence to Larry’s discovery of ad hoc concepts. Before Larry’s seminal work, a category […]
Larry Barsalou is definitively the person who has influenced my scientific activity most deeply. Everything started when I was a graduate student in Psychology at the University of Bologna and went to the University of Chicago as a visiting scholar. I had read all of Larry’s papers, had the chance to go abroad during the […]
Researchers have argued for centuries over two leading statistical approaches: Bayesian analysis and the Frequentist approach. Both holding their own complex (and convincing) reasoning, well-meaning researchers can all agree on the goal of their analyses: reaching conclusions with the least amount of bias and error. The war between Bayesians and Frequentists is likely far from […]
The world around us is structured. Certain features of objects just go together. Imagine a muscular sports car in a 1950s black-and-white photograph, like this classic Ferrari 340: What do you think its color was? And what color would you guess a 1950’s VW beetle in a grayscale image was? Chances are you did not […]