Language and thought

What is linguistic determinism?

The idea that language determines the thoughts and perceptions available to a speaker- (largely rejected)

What is linguistic relativity?

The idea that language shapes or biases thought without fully determining it

What is “thinking-for-speaking”?

The notion that language shapes thought while speaking by drawing attention to language-specific features

What types of questions does linguistic relativity explore?

Whether language influences perception, memory, reasoning, and spatial/ temporal concepts

What does the Bloom & Keil (2001) quote emphasise?

The debate is about whether structure of language affects thought beyond conveyed meaning

How do English and Mandarin speakers differ in conceptualising time?

English: Horizontal metaphors (e.g. ahead or behind)

Mandarin: Vertical metaphors (e.g. up for past, down for future)

What are the three spatial reference types in language?

1. Relative- specify directions and locations relative to the viewer e.g. left/ right, front/ back (English, Dutch, Japanese)

2. Intrinsic- specify locations in term of object-centred coordinates e.g. the ball is at the “foot” of the hill (Arrente, Australian)

3. Absolute- specify locations based on a global reference frame centred on the object e.g. north/ south (Totonac, Mexico)

How might grammatical gender affect cognition?

Speakers may attribute gendered characteristics to objects

What is categorical perception (CP)?

The brain perceives continuous stimuli in discrete categories (e.g. colour, phonemes)

What are two features of categorical perception?

1. Sharp labelling (identification) function

2. Discontinuous discrimination

What is the key idea behind language and CP?

Language may reinforce or even help create category boundaries

How is colour a classic case of “categorical perception”?

Our perceptions categorise stimuli in an arbitrary manner given the nature of the physical wor;d

Why may our colour perceptions not faithfully mirror the physical properties of light?

Perceived differences among wavelengths that fall into different categories are exaggerated and differences among wavelengths that fall within the same category are minimised

What is another classical case of categorical perception?

Phoneme percetion

What is the role of VOT (Voice Onset Time) in speech perception)?

Continuous VOT variation leads to categorical perception- e.g. hearing either “ba” or “pa”

What do we show categorical perception in the domain of vision and speech?

The languages we speak impact on our perception of colour and speech sounds

1. The colour terms we use are a by-product of what colours appear the most salient

2. The phonemes selected for language are the by-product of the acoustic contrasts are most salient based on auditory physiology

What does Kuhl’s work with infants show?

Infants can discriminate phonemes across languages at 6 months, but sensitivity declines with exposure to native language

What did the chinchilla study by Kuhl & Miller (1975) show?

Chinchillas exhibit human-like categorical perception of speech sounds, suggesting a physiological basis

What is the central claim of linguistic relativity?

Language influences (but does not determine) non-linguistic perception and thinking

Why is colour perception used to test linguistic relativity?

Colour categories vary across languages and provide measurable perceptual effects

What is the codability hypothesis (Brown & Lenneberg, 1954)

Colours with easily nameable (high codability) terms are remembered better

What was the basic design of the Brown & Lenneberg study?

Participants were shown high or low codable colours and asked to match them after a delay

What did participants remember better in this study?

High codable colours

Why is this logic potentially flawed?

1. Codability might reflect visual salience due to colour physiological

2. Hard to separate language vs visual processing effects in single-language studies

What as the design of the Berinmo colour memory study (Roberson et al, 2000)?

1. 12 Berinmo speakers matched English focal and non-focal colours to images

2. Task repeated over 5 days until correct

What were the results of the Berinmo study?

Berinmo speakers remembered Berinmo focal colours better, not English focal colours

What do the results of the Berinmo study suggest?

Colour memory is shaped by the language-specific categories

What is the limitation of the Berinmo task?

It may measure memory rather than real-time perception

Why is visual search a better task for testing linguistic relativity?

It is a low-level perceptual task, less affected by memory and conscious reflection

What is the key setup in visual search experiments? (4)

1. One target colour among distractors

2. Differ only by one step in hue

3. Compared across and within colour category boundaries

4. Target shown in left or right visual field

What did the split-brain study test (Gilbert et al, 2006)?

Whether language influences perception depending on which hemisphere receives the visual input

What were the results of Gilbert et al (2006) study?

1. Lexical (colour label) effects occurred only in the right visual field (processed by the left hemisphere, dominant for language)

2. No category effect in the left visual field?

What does this show about language and perception?

Language can influence early perceptual processing, but only when the input reachers the language-dominant hemisphere