Federal Project Grant Award Summary

The National Science Foundation's Office of Multidisciplinary Activities (Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences program, CFDA 47.075) awarded The Ohio State University $254,181 on August 1, 2026, for a collaborative research project examining cognitive modeling of pragmatic reasoning in human languages. The project, which runs through July 31, 2029, investigates how children across typologically distinct linguistic systems develop the ability to interpret scalar implicatures (e.g., "some, but not all") and draw inferences beyond explicitly stated information. The research delivers behavioral measures of language development, numerical cognition, attention, inhibition, and working memory, combined with computational modeling to quantify how these cognitive factors interact in predicting pragmatic interpretation.

The project produces generalizable theories of human intelligence, learning, and cognitive development through comparative analysis of children exposed to different language structures. Key deliverables include publicly available datasets on language and cognitive development, identification of which components of pragmatic reasoning reflect universal human cognitive properties versus language-specific experience, and empirical evidence demonstrating how linguistic experience and domain-general cognitive abilities jointly shape children's inference-making capabilities. The research addresses a central gap in understanding how the human mind transitions from literal interpretation to reasoning about implied meaning, a foundational component of human communication and cognition.