Is there something quantum-like about the human mental lexicon?

Abstract

This talk proceeds from the premise that IR should engage in a more substantial dialogue with cognitive science. After all, how users decide relevance, or how they chose terms to modify a query are processes rooted in human cognition. Recently, there has been a growing literature applying quantum theory (QT) to model cognitive phenomena ranging from human memory to decision making. Two aspects will be highlighted. The first will show how concept combinations can be modelled in a way analogous to quantum entangled twin-state photons. Details will be presented of cognitive experiments to test for the presence of “entanglement” in cognition via an analysis of bi-ambiguous concept combinations. The second aspect of the talk will show how quantum inference effects currently being used to fit models of human decision making may be applied to model interference between different dimensions of relevance. The underlying theme behind this talk is QT can potentially provide the theoretical basis of new genre of information processing models more aligned with human cognition.