We have known Larry for a long time. At first it was a one-way affair, when we were in graduate school and read his work. After we studied Larry’s paper on ad-hoc categories our view on semantic memory was never the same again. We had been working on the boundary between episodic and semantic memory, taking the side of researchers who argued that there was no fundamental distinction between the two types of memory, and here came Larry’s view on how flexibility is a key feature of concepts.

When we contacted Larry to ask if we could visit for a half year as postdocs (which we extended to 9 months) he immediately sent us an enthusiastic response, saying how we could do many fun projects, in such a friendly and warm tone that we felt welcome already, even though this was probably the first time he heard of us. We did not know that he had moved from Chicago (then our favorite US city) to Atlanta (then not so favorite yet) and he must have felt our disappointment and assured us that Atlanta is a great place to live. Which was true. We would like to introduce Atlanta as a typical member of the ad-hoc category Things that seem a bit of a gamble but turn out to be delightful (Brussels sprouts, yoga, Jane Austen novels, bird watching) When we first arrived at his office he took out a blank sheet of paper and started drawing his map of Atlanta, pointing out some fun neighborhoods where we could look for a place to live, marking nice restaurants, shops (Your Dekalb Farmers Market is still our all-time favorite supermarket anywhere in the world), and arthouse cinemas. He introduced us to the concept of Raging Burritos and Flying Biscuits. In general, he seemed to have a perfect understanding of what we would like and where we could find it.

On our road trip from Southern California to Atlanta (this was in the spring of 2000), still thinking we were going to do research on ad-hoc categories, we read Larry’s BBS paper on Perceptual Symbols Systems. Another big shock! What a great theory, but we thought it lacked solid evidence. At the first couple of weekly lab meetings, we kept going back to his paper and tried to tackle each of the references that he listed as support for his ideas, to the extent that his students were asking each other, “Why did these guys come here?”. Larry, however, seemed to have great fun in our attempts to undermine his ideas, and we took up a challenge to experimentally test his theory. We used a property verification task to test if a modality switch effect would emerge in conceptual processing. He participated a lot in setting up the experiment, coming up with creative stimuli, and arranging some classrooms for us to use a lab space, and meanwhile Americanizing our formal high school English (“You betcha!”).

In the experiments, we tested the idea that when people mentally represent a concept (e.g., think about a banana), they use the same processing mechanisms that they also use to interact with the real world (e.g., see, hold, peel, smell, or taste a banana). These processing mechanisms are specific for sensory modalities, and in perceptual tasks participants usually respond slower when they switch from one modality to another compared to when they respond to the same modality as on the previous trial. Our reasoning was that the same switching cost should occur when people switch from a mental representation in one modality to one in another modality. We presented items such as ‘a banana can be sweet’ or ‘a flag can be striped’ to which participants responded as quickly as possible. As in perceptual tasks, participants were slower when the property on the previous trial was from a different modality than if it was from the same modality as the current trial. The experiments proved Larry right, we published them, and our careers got a big boost.

Larry is a great example of a scientist, always open to new ideas and never insulted if his ideas are challenged. He is always exploring, seeking to improve our understanding of the human mind. His creativity is boundless, and he has an unsurpassed ability to generate ideas combining insights from various fields (cognitive science, linguistics, philosophy, neuroscience). Before he decided to go into science Larry was a musician, and although it would have been a great loss to cognitive science if he had decided to stay in music, who knows what happiness he would have brought the world, probably developing an entirely new style. Another exemplary characteristic is that he has fun doing what he does. But above all, he is one of the kindest researchers we have ever met, always giving others credit, always interested in what other people are doing.

References

Pecher, D., Zeelenberg, R., & Barsalou, L. W. (2003). Verifying conceptual properties in different modalities produces switching costs. Psychological Science, 14, 119-124. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9280.t01-1-01429

Pecher, D., Zeelenberg, R., & Barsalou, L. W. (2004). Sensorimotor simulations underlie conceptual representations: Modality-specific effects of prior activation. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 11, 164-167. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03206477

Van Dantzig, S., Pecher, D., Zeelenberg, R., & Barsalou, L. W. (2008). Perceptual processing affects conceptual processing. Cognitive Science, 32, 579-590. https://doi.org/10.1080/03640210802035365