Probing recursion

Abstract

The experimental probing of recursion in human performance is faced with non-trivial problems. Here, I analyse three case studies from the literature and argue that they tell us little about the underlying mental processes at play within each of these domains: (a) the question of whether experimental participants employ recursive rules in parsing artificial strings of nonsense syllables; (b) the role of self-embedded structures in reasoning and general cognition; and (c) the reputed connection between structural features of a given object and the corresponding, recursive rules needed to represent/generate it. I then outline what a recursive process would actually look like and how one could go about probing its presence in human behaviour, concluding, however, that recursive processes in performance are very unlikely, at least as far as fast, mandatory, and automatic modular processes are concerned.