Section 3, Conundrum 9, William and Mary Cognitive Psychology 311, Professor Ball

What is the Whorfian hypothesis?

language determines thought

The sensory processing of color involves 3 different types of what?

cones

Color processing involves multiple regions of what cortex?

visual

what is color constancy?

we perceive colors as a constant even when subtle changes of illumination make dramatic changes to the colors we view

What does the dress illusion show?

color perception is subjective

Schlaffke et al (2015) tested individuals who differed in their perception of #TheDress illusion and found what?

regions of the brain associated with higher-level cognitive functions showed increased brain activity in individuals who perceived one version of the illusion

What does the Schlaffke (2015) study suggest?

higher-order cognitive processes can impact color perception

What did Rosch report in the 1970s?

tribes from Irian Java who only had two words for colors performed just as well as English speakers on a variety of color-related tasks

What does Rosch’s 1970s research suggest?

There is no Whorfian Effect and color perceptual processing is a universal mechanism found in all brains regardless of culture or language spoken

What did Roberson, Davidoff, and colleagues (2000) find?

Recognition memory performance was better for color chips if participants were tested with color chip pairs that came from different color categories (cross-categories) defined by their language rather than belonging to the same linguistic color category (within-category)

What does Roberson and Davidoff's (2000) research support?

the Whorfian Hypothesis

What did Kay and Reigner (2006) find?

color processing across different languages may still have some universal brain mechanism that relates to the processing of focal (basic) colors regardless of language spoken.

What did Dehaene and colleagues (2006) conclude with their study with Amazonian tribes?

that some form of core geometric knowledge could be a universal constituent of the human mind (i.e., not dependent on language spoken), but that language could still influence spatial processing

What does the Dehaene (2006) Amazon study show?

support for Whorf’s hypothesis

What did Boroditsky (2001) compare the effects of?

spatial metaphors on processing temporal information

English uses _____ (one-dimensional, directional) metaphors for time

horizontal

Mandarin speakers use _____ and _____ metaphors for time

horizontal and vertical

Why does Boroditsky (2001) support Whorf’s hypothesis that language can affect low-level cognitive processes?

English and Mandarin speaking participants were faster at answering temporal questions if primed with a horizontal prime question, but only Mandarin speakers showed a vertical priming effect for the control condition

What did Finbeiner (2002) find?

English speakers were more likely to view the manner alternative to be more similar to the test display than other language speakers

What did Finbeiner (2002) compare?

English, Japanese, and Spanish speakers on memory for moving objects that moved in different manners and followed different spatial paths of motion

Why does Finbeiner (2002) support Whorf’s hypothesis?

English speakers may perceive motion differently because of the language they use.

What did Roberson (2004) examine?

Color perception with English-speaking and Otjihimba-speaking children

What kind of study was Roberson (2004)

longitudinal

What did Roberson (2004) find?

hen the children were youngest there was no differences between the two language groups in how they performed a color memory task

What influenced color task performance in Roberson (2004)?

the perceptual distance between the stimuli being tested

In Roberson (2004), what happened as the children got older?

Color naming effects were seen in the patterns of responses they provided for color-related tasks. Differences between the two groups matched their languages spoken.

How does Roberson (2004) relate to Whorf?

it supports Whorf’s hypothesis

What did the researchers in Roberson (2004) NOT find?

support for the universal color processing mechanism suggested by Kay and Reigner

Why did Roberson (2004) not suppory Universal Color Processing Mechanism?

the focal colors were not the first color names learned by their child participants and there was no performance advantage when the color memory stimuli came from focal colors

What did Kwok (2011) train participants to do?

associate novel color names with specific colors

What physical changes to the brain did Kwok (2011) see?

showed gray matter changes in the visual cortex because of this training

What do the Kwok (2011) findings suggest?

learning new color names produced corresponding changes to the neural systems involved in processing color information

How does Kwok (2011) relate to Whorf?

This gives very strong support for Whorf’s hypothesis

What have Golden-Meadows examined developmental trends for?

the use of gestures in communication

How does Goldi-Meadows relate to Whorf’s hypothesis?

does not support

research with bilinguals who have immigrated to a new country as shown what?

The language they used to communicate at the time they experienced the event is more likely to be retrieved in that language from memory

What do results from bilingual research suggest?

autobiographical memories may be stored as linguistic representations

How does bilingual research relate to Whorf’s?

it supports his hypothesis

What is Wernicke’s Aphasia?

damage to temporal cortex and results in language comprehension problems

What is Broca’s aphasia?

damage to frontal cortex and results in language production problems

What did Davidoff (2001) report?

an aphasic patient who did not categorize facial emotions in terms of the standard basic emotion categories that normal participants use

How did Davidoff’s aphasia patients categorize faces?

by how similar they looked perceptually

How does Davidoff (2001) relate to Whorf’s hypothesis?

it strongly supports it

What did Varley and Siegel (2000) examine?

an aphasic patient who could understand words but could not understand sentences (agrammatism aphasia) and showed an ability to perform reasoning tasks correctly.

What did Varley and Siegel (2000) conclude?

the patient could still perform cognitive reasoning without the linguistic tools to express the reasoning task

How does Varley and Siegel (2000) relate to Whorf?

does not support Whorf’s hypothesis

What did Varley (2005) test?

tested agrammatism patients on mathematical tasks which we assume relies on linguistic translations of mathematical expressions to understand and solve problems

How did the Varley (2005) aphasics do on the tests?

they did very well on the math tasks, suggesting access to linguistic representations is not necessary for the cognitive processing necessary for solving these problems

How does Varley (2005) relate to Whorf’s hypothesis?

does not support Whorf’s Hypothesis

What did Robinson (2006) test?

a dynamic aphasia patient’s descriptions of events depicted in pictures

what was interesting about Robinson (2011)’s aphasia patient?

they could describe the story but there were prolonged pauses during the spoken response

How does Robinson (2011) relate to Whorf’s hypothesis?

does not support

what kind of aphasia did Lazar (200) temporarily induce?

Wernicke’s aphasia

How did Lazar (2011) temporarily induce aphasia?

anaesthetizing the chosen area of the brain in an awake patient

what kind of test could Lazar (2011)’s patient not provide correct overt responses to?

linguistic tests

why doesnt Lazar (2011) support Whorf’s hypothesis?

the patient could think the correct answer, showing thought without language

What did Vgotsky and Luria suggest?

thought comes before inner speech and that inner speech comes before overt speech

Pinker (1994) provided a number of arguments for what?

why language could not be the basis for thought

American behaviorist researchers suggest what about inner speech?

it is simply the same as overt speech

what is one way to research inner speech?

articulatory suppression to block the phonological loop in working memory

what is articulatory suppression

repeatedly saying a word or phrase to yourself in your head

what do embodied cognition theorists propose?

cognitive concepts are represented as mental simulations of perceptions and actions, and these simulations are used in cognitive processing

what did Hank (2004) show?

when participants read action verbs, brain activity results in the somatosensory and motor regions of the cortex associated with controlling the muscles/limbs associated with these actions.

what were participants in Zwann (2004) tasked with?

performing a size perception task with a second ball displayed after a first ball that differs in its size, while auditory sentences were played in the background

What happened in Zwann (2004)?

Even though the participants were told to ignore these sentences, their size perception judgments were faster if the size difference conveyed motion in the ball that was congruent with the motion depicted in the background sentence.

What did Zwann (2004) researchers assume?

the linguistic processing of the sentence automatically produced simultaneous activation in the same regions of the brain used for processing the visual information needed for processing congruent visual stimuli in the perceptual task

What does Zwann (2004) provide evidence for?

perceptual processing being the basis for understanding language (anti-Whorf)

What did Mathot (2017) measure?

pupil size as participants read or listened to words that difference in their illumination details

What happened to the pupils of Mathot’s participants?

Pupil size varied as a function of the illumination associated with words, suggesting that the visual system has automatically and involuntarily simulated the sensory-motor aspects of the linguistic representations associated with words.