Martin Dimond Stewart Braine (June 3, 1926 – April 6, 1996) was a cognitive psychologist known for his research on the
development of language and reasoning.[1] He was Professor of Psychology at
New York University at the time of his death.
Braine was well known for his research on
mental logic.[2] He theorized that people naturally make
deductive inferences based on their knowledge of natural language terms like if,all, any, and not. Such terms are understood through an intuitive logic that supports
commonsense reasoning, but may also produce reasoning fallacies or errors.[3] This natural mental logic was viewed as distinct from the
standard logic of mathematicians and philosophers in terms of the inferences it licensed.[4] In contrast to
Philip Johnson-Laird and others who suggested that people rely on
mental models as opposed to logic when reasoning,[5] Braine took the position that people rely on both mental logic and mental models, with the former closely tied to processes of linguistic comprehension.[6]
Braine edited the volumes Categories and Processes in Language Acquisition by Yonata Levy and Izchak Schlesinger,[7] and Mental Logic with David O'Brien.[8]
Biography
Braine was born in
Kuala Lumpur on June 3, 1926.[1][2] He was the son of Edith Braine, a teacher, and Charles Dimond Conway Braine, a civil engineer.[9] His younger brother was the British philosopher
David Dimond Conway Braine.
Braine received his B.S. degree in mechanical engineering in 1946 at
University of Birmingham in England.[10] He subsequently attended the
University of London where he received a B.S. in psychology. In London he attended lectures by
Jean Piaget, which influenced his later research on the development of logical reasoning.[11]
Braine married Lila (Rosensveig) Ghent in 1960.
Lila Braine was a professor of psychology at
Barnard College, Columbia University. They had a son Jonathan in 1961 and a daughter Naomi in 1964.[14] Braine died of cancer in New York City on April 6, 1996.[2]
Research on Language Development
Braine conducted research on child language development and engaged in the
empiricism-
nativism debate.[15] Prior to
Noam Chomsky's arguments for innate linguistic universals,[16] there was a strong belief that the structures of language were learned from the input. Braine offered a compromise position that language acquisition was a process of mapping utterances onto a syntax of thought, supported by semantic primitives and a mental logic.
Braine proposed that when learning language, young children use "limited scope" formula to produce their first word combinations, with each formula consisting of a relational term with a slot to be filled (e.g. all gone ____).[17][18] Braine's view that toddlers learn the combinatorial properties of words on an item-by-item basis paved the way for
usage-based, lexicalist approaches to grammatical development.[19][20] Other work focused on learners' acquisition of grammatical gender categories and their reliance on probabilistic cues to acquire grammatical structure. Braine's research emphasized how linguistic patterns are discovered and strengthened through use and repetition.[21][22]
Representative Publications
Braine, M. D. S. (1963). On learning the grammatical order of words. Psychological Review, 70(4), 323–348.
Braine, M. D. S. (1963). The ontogeny of English phrase structure: The first phase. Language, 39(1), 1–13.
Braine, M. D. S.(1978). On the relation between the natural logic of reasoning and standard logic. Psychological Review, 85(1), 1-21.
Braine, M. D. S., & Brooks, P. J. (1995). Verb argument structure and the problem of avoiding an overgeneral grammar. In M. Tomasello & W. E. Merriman (Eds.), Beyond names for things: Young children's acquisition of verbs (pp. 353–376). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Braine, M. D. S., & O'Brien, D. P. (1991). A theory of if: A lexical entry, reasoning program, and pragmatic principles. Psychological Review, 98(2), 182–203.
Braine, M. D. S., & Rumain, B. (1981). Development of comprehension of “or”: Evidence for a sequence of competencies. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 31(1), 46–70.
Braine, M. D. S., & David P. O'Brien (eds.) (1998). Mental Logic, Mahwah, New Jersey London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
^Rumain, Barbara; Connell, Jeffrey; Braine, Martin D. (1983). "Conversational comprehension processes are responsible for reasoning fallacies in children as well as adults: If is not the biconditional". Developmental Psychology. 19 (4): 471–481.
doi:
10.1037/0012-1649.19.4.471.
ISSN0012-1649.
^Braine, Martin D. (1978). "On the relation between the natural logic of reasoning and standard logic". Psychological Review. 85 (1): 1–21.
doi:
10.1037/0033-295X.85.1.1.
ISSN0033-295X.
^Johnson-Laird, P. N. (Philip Nicholas), 1936- (1983). Mental models : towards a cognitive science of language, inference, and consciousness. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
ISBN978-0674568815.
OCLC9685856.{{
cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (
link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (
link)
^Braine, Martin D.; O'Brien, David P. (1991). "A theory of if: A lexical entry, reasoning program, and pragmatic principles". Psychological Review. 98 (2): 182–203.
doi:
10.1037/0033-295X.98.2.182.
ISSN1939-1471.
^Braine, M. D. S. (1959). "The ontogeny of certain logical operations: Piaget's formulation examined by nonverbal methods". Psychological Monographs: General and Applied. 73(5, Whole No. 475), 43.
^Braine, Martin D. S.; Bowerman, Melissa (1976). "Children's First Word Combinations". Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development. 41 (1): 1–104.
doi:
10.2307/1165959.
JSTOR1165959.
^Brooks, Patricia J.; Kempe, Vera (2012). Language Development. BPS Blackwell. pp. 103, 110–113.
ISBN978-1444331462.
^Pine, Julian M.; Lieven, Elena V. M. (1997). "Slot and frame patterns and the development of the determiner category". Applied Psycholinguistics. 18 (2): 123–138.
doi:
10.1017/S0142716400009930.
ISSN0142-7164.
S2CID145808085.