with @annaborghi.bsky.social and @chiarafini.bsky.social

If you are interested, you can read more about the study on ecological concepts led by @ileniafalcinelli.bsky.social at osf.io/preprints/os...; for details about the conversations study led by @chiarafini.bsky.social please get in touch with her!

Great news!

To conclude, I would like to add an anecdotal piece of evidence collected a few days ago that attests what it is like to live with a chemist. I encourage you to find out which is the only item I have not added to the list.

All in all, these data suggest expertise affects conceptual representations showing that more essentialist patterns of thinking might also emerge as a result of prolonged life experiences.

Finally, we also found that chemists judge the concept of H2O as being significantly more concrete compared to laypeople.

A sentence acceptability task suggested chemists might hold a stricter representation of what counts as water, with some water examples (e.g., ocean water) considered to be mixtures of water rather than pure water.

We found chemists incorporate more than laypeople H2O as a constituent element of the concept of water; we also show the conceptual organisation of the domain exhibits qualitative differences across the two groups;

In five experiments—four of which replicate Barbara Malt’s 1994 study—we compared experienced chemists and laypeople’s conceptual representation of water. @annaborghi.bsky.social @chiarafini.bsky.social @ileniafalcinelli.bsky.social & Marta Arcovito