Re: RT list: Fw: Cognitive effects/Contextual effects

It is true we now use "cognitive effects" rather than "contextual
effects". This is a terminological rather than a substantive change.
"Contextual effect" has to be defined or else it does not evoke any
clear meaning, not even a rough one, in most readers. "Cognitive
effect" on the other hand can be roughly understood (as something
worth achieving) even without a precise idea of what it might consist
of. So, when we have to explain in a few paragraphs the basic tenets
of the theory, " cognitive effect" yield more cognitive/contextual
effect for less effort than "contextual effect". Still, it is hard to
imagine any cognitive effect, or at least any cognitive effect of a
non-negligible magnitude, that would not satisfy our definintion of
contextual effect (i.e. some effect that follows neither from the
input alone or from the context alone, but that follows from the
union of the input and the context). I hope this helps.

Cheers, Dan

At 19:14 29/01/2007, Anabella Niculescu wrote:
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>Dear All,
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>I know that my question may seem really childish, but I cannot
>gather myself to discover which is the actual term.
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>What I mean is: I know that initially (1986), RT used
>either cognitive effects or contextual effects. Then it gave up one
>of those and now uses the other one.
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>Though I have RT books and articles all over, I cannot be certain of
>anything now.
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>Thanks for this.
>
>Anabella
Received on Mon Jan 29 19:53:14 2007