C10 language and thought

Question 1

Introductions and definitions

Answer 1

• Language is used to communicate thoughts
• Many ideas on language and thought came from philosophy
• Language is a creative exercise that is uniquely human
• When we interpret language we think about possible meanings
• Language may enrich our thoughts (content) but the important question is whether it determines them:

• Whorf (1956) suggested that language does influence our thoughts:
Strong position (linguistic determinism): language determines our thoughts;
Weak position (linguistic relativism): “language influences our thoughts”. 

• Other perspectives contend that language does not affect what we think or how we do so:
• Empiricism (e.g. Hume, Locke): children are blank slates (“tabula rasa”), language is learnt through exposure and experience, we learn to expect that certain things follow others (somewhat behaviourist);
• Constructivism (e.g. Piaget): language is just one outcome of general cognitive maturing;
• Rationalist (e.g. Plato): we are born with language which is revealed through exposure to the environment;
• Nativism (e.g. Fodor, Chomsky): language is an innate ability, we have specific cognitive modules for language;
• Radical pragmatism (e.g. Sperber): words have no intrinsic meaning, only what is agreed in dialogue.

Question 2

Language and thought together

Answer 2

Language, culture and thought are closely related:

Thinking leads to culture; thinking is affected by culture (what common thoughts are agreed upon in social groups);

Language is used to communicate these thoughts.

Implies that what is said is indirectly affected by the culture/context in which it is said.

Question 3

Interactionalism

Answer 3

Between the extremes of nativism/rationalism and empiricism/constructivism/pragmatism lies interactionalism:

• Kant suggested some ability must be innate so that the learning process can kick-start, but that this enables us to acquire knowledge, through exposure and experience.
• This position implies that we take an active part in organising our experiences and drawing information from them, using cognitive abilities we are born with (even if these are immature to start with).
• It is complementary to constructivism - it may be that as we reach particular levels of ability our cognitive skills emerge more strongly. Example: a baby may be able to organise concepts and segment word streams in its early days but needs to reach a certain level of maturity to be able to turn this knowledge into spoken sentences.

Question 4

Introspection

Answer 4

Introspection is a technique for separating out conscious thoughts, feelings and experiences in order to analyse them;

• Pioneered by Wundt (1890s);
• Still used in psychology (e.g. self-report studies, interviews)
• Not the same as verbal protocol analysis (covered in chapter 11) but superficially similar;
• Questioned by James (1892) - is it really possible to split thoughts and feelings up into convenient chunks ?
• Discounted by Watson and other behaviourists - thought is irrelevant, it’s just subvocal speech, the resulting action is what is important;

Backtracked to “thinking is just ‘implicit language responses’”;
• This position was refuted by Smith (1947) who used curare to paralyse his larynx temporarily but while he was physically unable to speak he could still think;

Question 5

Thinking requires an understanding that others can hold false beliefs

Answer 5

Davidson (2001) claimed that thinking requires an understanding that others can hold false beliefs:

Triangulation: having access to the same information as another person, and using this to appreciate that they have a false belief. Example: child and parent both see a donkey, the child calls it a pony, the parent knows it is a donkey and that the child’s belief that it’s a pony is false.

Koenig and Echols (2003) found that even 16mo babies react differently to someone naming an object correctly than to someone giving it an incorrect label - suggests they can triangulate, and may have elements of a theory of mind.

Question 6

Fundamentals

Answer 6

• Syntax: word arrangement into meaningful sentences;

• Ideas relating to verbs are often about ownership, space, time, cause and intention;
suggests we may have ‘language of thought’;
suggests thought has some language-like structure within it.

• Thought can overlay literal meaning with richer, deeper meanings (“No means no” - the word “no” carries different connotations).

Question 7

Language and communication

Answer 7

Language is a form of communication, not the other way around;

Animals use many forms of communication but only humans use language to communicate
(See DSE212, Book 2, Chapter 2 - vervet monkeys, honey bees etc.)

Question 8

Aitchison proposed 10 features that are found in human communication

Answer 8

Some of these are also features of animal communication;

Four of them are unique to humans:
• Structure dependence: word order changes meaning - “dog bites man” is different to “man bites dog”;
Chomsky proposed a transformational grammar that tried to explain the rules beneath language that result in a sequence of words being grammatical or not;

• Displacement: we can refer to events that are distant in space and/or time
Bee ‘waggle dance’ isn’t really the same as this !).
Young children and animals show some some precursors to episodic memory but while children develop displacement ability, animals do not seem to;

• Creativity: we can say and understand sentences that we’ve never encountered before;

• Semanticity: we assign specific meaning to words
the vervet monkey ‘high threat/low threat’ squawks are not really comparable to this !

Question 9

Evolution of language and thought

Answer 9

• Homo sapiens and Neanderthals evolved from several sub-species of hominids;
• Both lived in Europe at the same time, but H.sapiens rapidly colonised many parts of the globe, while Neanderthals became extinct;
• Pinker and Bloom (1990) argued that language may have been adaptive (an advantage that evolved because it improved survival chances), not a spandrel (advantage that appeared through accident e.g. due to mutation);
• Potentially fatal threats could be more easily and successfully avoided if language enabled them to be communicated more clearly, precisely and quickly.
• Chomsky proposes that it is a spandrel, conferring no evolutionary advantage.

Question 10

The faculty of language

Answer 10

Hauser et al. (2002) claimed language was a broad faculty including motor skills, concepts and recursion rather than a narrow faculty that included recursion only;

•Recursion is the ability to take the output of a process and push it back through the process again and again
Example: “Recursively half the number 16” - half of 16 is 8, half of 8 is 4, half of 4 is 2, half of 2 is 1;
Example: to parse a sentence we chop it into sub-clauses and parse those, then chop each of sub-clause into further sub-clauses until it’s reduced to the simplest units (“The DD303 book, which is good in parts, is very long” = “The DD303 book is good in parts”, “The DD303 book is long”.)
This skill underpins abilities such as constructing and interpreting complex embedded clauses, subjunctive thinking (possible events, hypothetical scenarios, wishful thinking) and counterfactual thinking (what if ? If only …)

• Animals have all the first abilities except recursion (we think!); not all our human language ability is unique - e.g. we can imitate but so can parrots (but chimps can’t);
• During the “Great Leap Forward” (50,000 years ago), H.sapien culture developed and diversified much more rapidly than before, but the Neanderthal equivalent did not. This may have contributed to their extinction, and language may have played a part.

Question 11

The Neanderthal mind

Answer 11

Wayne and Coolidge (2004) argue that there must have been neurological differences between H.sapiens and Neanderthals - possibly small differences in working memory capacity;
• Both groups had similar technology and lifestyles;
• There’s no evidence they shared a culture;
• Brain size and morphology was similar in both - they must have had similar intelligence or Neanderthals would have been out-competed to extinction much more quickly;

Question 12

The Neanderthal mind - archaeological evidence

Answer 12

The archaeological evidence from making flint tools suggests both species may have had a developed long-term working memory (LTWM - see chapter 11, Ericsson and Kintsch);
• This is a highly skilled operation requiring planning and goal seeking;
• It doesn’t use a pre-set sequence of actions, each tool needs to be made uniquely so needs planning, monitoring and adjustment to achieve a successful outcome;
• It needs physical dexterity, declarative knowledge of materials, angles, edges etc. and procedural knowledge of how to hit the stone being worked in order to craft it into an effective tool;
• Being able to retrieve this information rapidly from long-term memory would have been an important skill in this process.

Question 13

The Neanderthal mind - working memory

Answer 13

If smaller WM capacity, they may have been less able to adapt to changing circumstances - e.g. they didn’t migrate outside Europe (bit of a leap of faith here … ?);

• Smaller WM capacity could also have affected their language abilities:
• may only have been able to form short utterances;
• language would have been limited;
• hearers could only understand basic language too.

Neanderthals are thought to have been low in creativity, but some recent evidence of body adornment has been found;
• If they had limited WM, they may have dreamt less about things that don’t actually exist.

Question 14

The Neanderthal mind - environment

Answer 14

The environment can also influence cognition:

• London taxi drivers had bigger hippocampi (Maguire et al., 2000), suggests practicing knowledge results in neuronal change;
• Cultural practices such as using tokens for counting before symbols/digits were used may have helped develop early man’s brain structure differently in different hominid sub-species - i.e. culture may change brains (Malafouris, 2010).
• The evidence for plasticity is still too new to support this conclusively.

Question 15

Nativism and thought

Answer 15

It seems that some cognitive abilities or structures must be innate or we wouldn’t be able to form our first concepts.

Extreme nativists such as Fodor (1975) contend that faculties such as thought are mainly innate.

Contrasting positions such as constructivism posit that they emerge as a consequence of general pre-programmed cognitive development (Piaget).

Question 16

Piaget and epistemology

Answer 16

Piaget (1923) claimed that:
• Cognitive abilities that enable us to mentally represent concepts include language, play and dreaming;
• These naturally emerge as we reach a level of cognitive maturity;
• Cognitive development results in ability to think, which enables the later development of language;
• The development of cognitive abilities depends on sensory input;

However if true then blind children should show language delay but they don’t (Bigelow, 1987);
• They acquire different words (more words for things that can be touched, fewer for those that can’t such as “moon”) but similar rate and number of words at a similar age;
• This might be due to parents over-compensating so can’t be taken as definitive evidence that Piaget was wrong.

Question 17

Piaget and epistemology - evidence

Answer 17

His evidence that language depends on cognitive development is that:
• Infants think before they can talk;
• Imagery, imitation, language, play etc. emerge around the same time;
• Language ability in middle childhood doesn’t affect reasoning ability (they seem to be independent);
• Children use language for different purposes as their cognitive abilities mature (start by just naming things, learn to use language to communicate e.g. asking for things/expressing their feelings (“don’t want it !”) etc. etc.)

However this suggests object permanence (more HERE) should emerge before concepts of objects and names but it doesn’t:
• 9mo children without object permanence can better distinguish objects that are each given labels such as tones (Xu, 2002) so must be able to form representations of these;

It could be that Piaget’s assertion that cognitive development requires sensory input was incorrect,
• Research into sensory impoverishment (e.g. blind and deaf children) may tell nothing about how language and cognitive ability are related.
• However even if a causal relationship between language and thought can’t be proven, they might both be innate so this doesn’t disprove nativism as a whole.

Question 18

Fodor and the ‘language of thought’

Answer 18

According to Fodor (1975):
• All concepts are innate;

We possess a language of thought that is concerned with:
• the content of concepts;
• the structure of propositions.

Chomsky (2006) agrees with this to some extent.

Question 19

Are concepts indefinable? - Fodor’s modularity of mind theory (1983)

Answer 19

According to Fodor’s modularity of mind theory (1983):
• Modules (theoretical cognitive modules, not actual brain structures) are informationally encapsulated, i.e. specialised to handle a particular kind of input and produce a specific output rather than “general purpose”. Example “a language module”;
• Some cognitive abilities are modular but the central system that looks after reasoning, thinking, consciousness world knowledge etc. is non-modular;
•Interface modules mediate the transfer of information between cognitive modules.

Question 20

Are concepts indefinable?

Answer 20

It’s hard to explain how we form concepts:
• To learn a concept a child must use inductive generalisation, i.e. compare it against known concepts by making a hypothesis (“It’s an X”) then testing this by comparing features (“it has … compared to X”);
• Therefore it must already know the features that define the concept;
• Contradicts the position of empiricists (“tabula rasa/blank slate/learn through experience”);

Question 21

Innate?

Answer 21

• Fodor claims we innately know all concept features, and the process is one of confirming what we already know (belief fixation) rather than learning new knowledge;
• Russell (2004) argues that this means children must have innate symbolic representations, so must have an innate language of thought.
• (I think the flaw in this argument is that children clearly do not possess all features of concepts, innately or otherwise, and that parents, siblings and peers fill in the gaps by telling them what the names of these are - “It’s a hairy dog” -> child can deduce what “hairy” is and acquire the concepts feature)
• Some things must be innate - if a concept can be decomposed (hairy dog -> hairy + dog, dog -> four legs/barks/etc.) then at some points the features are primitive and can’t be decomposed any further;
• At this point Fodor claims they are expressed in the language of thought (or ‘mentalese’) which has the same kind of syntax and rules as spoken language;
• Even modern concepts (“iPad”) can be broken down into simple primitives that could exist innately;
• Complex concepts are as easy to use as simple ones - Fodor claims no concepts can be completely defined.
• This implies that language learning is the process by which we link words to thousands of innate concepts. This seems crazy …

Question 22

The structure of propositions (“Thoughts have rules”)

Answer 22

• Thinking is the process by which individuals adopt positions, i.e. they come to have a particular view and feeling about something;
• This means it’s more than a statement of fact - it is a mental state;
• This state has structure, ideas within it are linked through a form of syntax.
Example: what I believe about something probably doesn’t make sense unless presented in some order;
• Thoughts must not be unstructured therefore, but must be linked, transitions between them must follow rules that say what (kind of) thoughts may follow others;
• Thoughts can provoke other thoughts (Partial phrases heard (“Susan saw …”) can provoke others (“What/who did Susan see ?”));

Question 23

The structure of propositions (“Thoughts have rules”) 2

Answer 23

We think many thoughts rapidly in everyday life - many are novel:
• Fodor’s explanation is that we can generate many new combinations of words or thoughts because language and thought share combinatorial semantics (existing words/thoughts can be combined using rules that generate new words/thoughts);
• Russell points out a logical error in this argument: even if we do have rules that allow for many new combinations, and if it’s clear that we produce many different combinations, it doesn’t follow that the outcome is the result of the ability - they could be completely separate.

While acknowledging this, Fodor claims language of thought is the best explanation we have for why we can be so productive.

Question 24

The structure of propositions (“Thoughts have rules”) 3

Answer 24

If thought has structure, then understanding the rules of a language enables us to make inferences about thoughts expressed in that language, and to form beliefs:
• “John loves the girl” - a good understanding of English language enables the thought that “the girl loves John” can be formed;
• Fodor claims that without weak knowledge of English we might understand the first thought but not the second (really ? I think they would be able to understand the first thought, then at least generate the second in their native language …);
• Even if we form the thought that “the girl might love John”, it doesn’t follow that we automatically believe this to be so.
• (also this only works for ‘two-way’ verbs, e.g. when we form the thought “Dog bites man”, we don’t tend to think that maybe the man also bites the dog …)

Question 25

Propositional attitudes

Answer 25

• A propositional attitude is a mental stance, something we believe or think about something else (“I hope the weather will be good tomorrow”);
• It’s closely related to theory of mind - understanding the propositional attitudes of others especially when these don’t match ours;
• An example of this is understanding that others hold false beliefs
• The Maxi test, showed evidence for ToM in 0% of 3-4yo children, 57% of 4-6yo and 86% of 6-9yo (Wimmer and Perner, 1983)

Question 26

Reasons why 3yo may fail false belief tasks:

Answer 26

Russell argues it’s a failure of executive function:
• Belief and knowledge are not the same - facts are the reasons why we do things according to Russell;
• Children may fail the Maxi test when they know that the location of the item has changed but can’t suppress this knowledge, so when asked “Where will Maxi look ?” they can’t suppress the pre-potent (most powerful) response which is to say that he will look in the changed location.
• If true, they should find it easy to answer “Why does Maxi go to the wrong cupboard ?” but they find this hard;
• They seem to understand that “seeing implies knowing” - they know Maxi’s chocolate is in a new place because they saw it being moved - Russell claims this understanding is innate;
• However they don’t seem to understand that “not seeing means not knowing” - Maxi didn’t see the chocolate being moved so he doesn’t know it’s in a new place (thinks it’s still in the original place) - Russell claims this step is not innate and has to be learned.

DeVilliers and deVilliers (2003) claim it’s due to linguistic incompetence:
• Evidence in deaf children suggests a link between delayed language and delayed mental reasoning;
• In a non-verbal task (“Sam the mouse”), children as young as 2y11m correctly looked at where the mouse would go if it had a false belief, even though they incorrectly reported this - suggests they had implicit knowledge they couldn’t articulate - (Clements and Perner, 1994).

Question 27

Awareness of other creatures’ intentions/desires/fears is not the same as being aware they have a false belief:

Answer 27

• Infants and animals can show the former without showing the latter;

• Call and Tomasello (1999) developed a non-verbal false belief task:
• Replicated the results of verbal false belief tasks in children - demonstrates task validity;
• Great apes failed the test;
• Hare and Tomasello (2004) showed great apes and chimpanzees failed to understand collaborative gestures such as gazing and pointing in an object-choice task where a helper used these to indicate which one of two containers contained food:
• Humans and apes can point but apes do not seem to use this collaboratively;
• They do use it in competitive situations - in a task where the first to get to the food won it, apes typically tried to grab the container the human reached for;
• Dogs are better at using collaborative cues such as eye-gaze and pointing (LOL - NSS !!)
• Humans point from 14mo, and understand the collaborative object-choice task;
• Moll and Tomasello (2007) suggest humans may have a joint attentional frame (they can attend to, and share experience of something together, e.g. infants learning through the experience of playing with something with a parent as opposed to just imitating);
• This supports Vygotsky’s social constructivist theory, that we developed the ability to take perspective cognitive stances through social collaboration rather than competition

Question 28

Language: nativism and radical pragmatics

Answer 28

If language of thought has structure and rules, then is there some universal grammar underlying language and all languages ?
• Chomsky claims there is;
• Radical pragmatists such as Sperber claim language has no inherent meanings outside of the context in which it is used

Question 29

Linguistic universals

Answer 29

• Children face the problem that they don’t have mature cognitive abilities and have to learn through experience;
• The gap between their ability and the language they hear is significant yet they apply what they have and make (some) sense of the complex word stream - this suggests they have some innate ability that they can use to build experience on top of;
• It might be that “language” is an innate ability, and so “languages” (spoken, written etc.) may have some universal elements.

Evidence for this includes the fact that there are many commonly encountered word orders in many different languages, e.g. Subject-verb-object (“The man/bit/the dog”), and these are non-random:
• this could be a fundamental component of language;
• it could result from (common human) cognitive processes;
• it might just be that the easiest constructs to learn have survived;
• it could be environment-influenced (e.g. the subject has more salience so is put first).

Question 30

Language: structure and parameters - Chomsky (1965)

Answer 30

Chomsky (1965):
• proposed we have a language acquisition device, an innate cognitive ability that guides our acquisition of language;
• suggested language is a separate cognitive faculty to others such as thought, reasoning etc. (his independence hypothesis);
• distinguished between the “surface structure” (structure of spoken/written) and “deep structure” (internal rules) of language.

Question 31

Language: structure and parameters - Chomsky later (1980s)

Answer 31

He later (1980s) developed the principles and parameters theory:
• Children have innate abstract representations for language rules and elements, that they have to map onto the spoken language they hear;
•The process of learning language involves “tuning” this mapping and making it more accurate;

If the independence hypothesis is true (if language drives cognitive development but is a separate faculty), deaf children should show different cognitive development to those who can hear;
• Research shows they do not show language delay - they follow a similar development trajectory, spontaneously using ever more complex sign language in a similar way to the linguistic development of hearing children;
• However this doesn’t prove the independence hypothesis as sign language and verbal languages may have fundamental differences and structures.

Bi-lingual children pose another problem for Chomsky’s theory: if learning a language is about mapping a set of internal rules and structures onto what is heard, doing this for two languages should result in some language delay but this doesn’t happen (Messer, 2000).

Question 32

A design for language ?

Answer 32

In the 1990s Chomsky developed his theory into the minimalist programme which is more bottom-up/biologically driven than the previous principles-and-parameters theory;

This theory argues that language develops so that it is optimal:
• Language is innate and modular;
• It interacts with other cognitive systems but is separate from them;
• Language is a ‘perfect’ system, i.e. there’s no redundancy and any thought can be expressed verbally (which doesn’t mean all expressions are unambiguous).

This explains why language is so good for effective communication - if it had merely evolved as a faculty in response to random genetic mutation it seems very unlikely it would have turned out to be so good a fit to the purposes we use it for.

This suggests that words have fixed conceptual structures - not just negotiated between individuals (cf. radical pragmatics).

Question 33

Radical pragmatics

Answer 33

This perspective claims words have no intrinsic conceptual structure but that their meaning depends on context;

One approach investigates:
• Homonyms: words with the same spelling, different meanings (bank = river edge vs. place to put money);
• Polysemous words:same meaning in different senses (bank = place to put stuff, “(savings) bank” vs. “(blood) bank”).

Question 34

Jackendoff (1976) proposed a framework (conceptual semantics)

Answer 34

Jackendoff (1976) proposed a framework (conceptual semantics) that attempted to explain how children work out the meanings of words in order to learn them;

However words are ambiguous - a “black” car is a different colour to a “black” grape or a “black” olive, and the formal system proposed by conceptual semantics doesn’t explain how children acquire these different meanings as they learn language;

Radical pragmatists attempted to explain problems such as this.

Question 35

Grice (1989) first distinguished between what words ‘mean’, and what they are intended to mean:

Answer 35

Grice (1989) first distinguished between what words ‘mean’, and what they are intended to mean:
• this concept of implicature (or “what is meant by words when used”) must take the speaker’s language ability into account - how good are they at choosing words that convey their intended meaning ?

According to radical pragmatics it can’t be assumed that what was said is what was literally meant due to use of sarcasm, irony, deliberate misunderstanding etc.

We can choose to reject the literal meaning of what is said (what it actually means) and take the figurative meaning instead (its metaphorical meaning), or vice versa;
• (BTW mixing up these two words is also amusing. How many people say “Yeah, that guitar solo literally blew my head off !” Really ? Think you meant “figuratlvely” there given that you still seem to have a head LOL !!)

However words do have meanings before they are put into a context, though this is by convention as we can choose to use them in unusual ways.
• (The book calls this “verbal abuse” (!) but this kind of dissonance is common in poetry or descriptive prose as a way to elicit imagery “She shuddered into the room”)

Verbs can be chosen to communicate precisely - “Pour me a glass of orange juice” vs “Fill my glass with orange juice” (Pinker, 2007)

Question 36

The area of authorship considers texts (can be anything from one word to a vast volume of books) and the roles involved:

Answer 36

The area of authorship considers texts (can be anything from one word to a vast volume of books) and the roles involved:

• A text has an author who communicates their ideas to a reader;
• Each party in the communication makes assumptions about the other (like a mental picture of who they are, what they’re saying/reading);
• A number of roles are involved that shape the way in which the text is constructed and how it is read such as:
Real author: the writer;
Implied author: the reader’s mental picture of the real author;
Narrator: the ‘voice’ of the text
Narratee: the agent addressed by the narrator;
Implied reader: who the author imagines they are writing to;
Real reader: the actual reader.

• Radical pragmatics shows that language has a social dimension, it doesn’t disprove Chomsky.

Question 37

Linguistic determinism

Answer 37

This position contrasts with nativist theories of language;

It was postulated by Sapir and Whorf, hence known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis or the Whorfian hypothesis, and in essence claims that language affects what we think.

The strong form of the Whorfian hypothesis claims that language determines what we think - a position known as linguistic determinism; the weak form of the hypothesis is that language influences what we think - this is linguistic relativism;

To prove the Whorfian hypothesis, evidence would have to:
• show that there are thoughts that speakers of one language can have, which speakers of another language are unable to have;
• be something to do with cognitive process failure - i.e. reaching an impasse, not a vocabulary failure due to lack of understanding;
• be proven to be related to the languages involved, not cultural interpretation.

Question 38

Does language influence how we ‘see’ the world ?

Answer 38

• Early evidence for the Whorfian hypothesis came from colour perception studies:

• Brown and Lenneberg (1954) found that individuals everywhere may sense colour in the same way but may think about and categorise what they see differently;
• They found a positive correlation between colour recognition and codability (an index measuring how quickly a colour was named, inter- and intra-rater agreement on what colour an object was and the labels used to name colours);
• This suggests that language may influence thought;

• Other aspects of colour that have been investigated to probe the difference between how it is perceived and described include syntax and semantics, colour perception, object naming, spatial knowledge and “thinking for speaking” (a hypothesis from Dan Slobin which claims that the language we learn shapes the way we perceive reality and think about it - Wikipedia).

Question 39

Does language influence colour perception ?

Answer 39

Different ethnic groups use different numbers of categories for colours and they distinguish different numbers of colours by name

Heider and Olivier (1972) tested the hypothesis that the terms used by people influence the colours they can perceive:
• US English speakers and Dani people did a naming task (“what colour is this plastic disk ?”);
• They then did a memory test (“which of these disks have you seen before ?”);

They found that:
• English speakers used around 11 colour names compared to 2 for the Dani people of New Guinea who use “warm” and “cool”;
• No difference was found between the groups in the memory test;

They concluded that language did not appear to have a different effect on how either group thought, which was taken as evidence against the Whorfian hypothesis;
However later studies have produced conflicting results to this.

• Roberson et al. (2000) replicated the previous study with the Berinmo people who use five colour terms - green is in two of these;

• A difference was found in the memory test, indicating that language may have affected thought.
• However Munnich and Landau (2003) note that both groups used verbal rehearsal before the memory task so those with more words for colours might have been better able to distinguish different ones in the memory test.
• In this case then performance may have affected by linguistic representations for colours rather than language;
• This suggests tests of the Whorfian hypothesis must eliminate the effect of linguistic encoding.

Question 40

Does language influence spatial cognition ?

Answer 40

Different languages express spatial layout differently:

• Speakers of English and Dutch use relative positioning, e.g. one thing is left/right of another - may change if the observer changes position;
• Tzeltal (a Mayan dialect) uses absolute positioning, e.g. one thing is north/south/east/west of another so never changes irrespective of the observer’s position.

Brown and Levinson (1993) examined whether different reference frames affect how positions are referred to in non-linguistic tasks:

Dutch and Tzeltal speakers were asked to study a layout of objects, then turn through 180-degrees and recreate it;
• Tzeltal speakers recreated the layout with the objects on the same positions (an absolute frame of reference) but Dutch speakers preferred a relative reference frame, placing objects that had been on the right in the original to the left in the re-creation and vice-versa;
• This seems to support the Whorfian hypothesis - language appeared to affect how the participants saw the world in a situation where no linguistic encoding was involved.

Li and Gleitman (2002) showed evidence that environmental cues can affect the reference frame used more strongly than language:
• Replication of Brown and Levinson but with all English speakers:
• In a minimal environment (an empty room with no outside view) participants often used a relative reference frame;
• In a rich environment (room with objects and view to the outside) they tended to use an absolute reference frame.

Doesn’t eliminate the influence of language (encoding may have influenced performance) but shows it’s only one factor.

Boroditsky (2001) studied the influence of spatial and temporal metaphors on thinking (e.g. “looking forward”, “put the meeting back”):
• Some languages use horizontal metaphors, others use vertical ones (up = before, down = after. e.g. “JFK was up from Barak Obama”);
• Native English and native Mandarin speakers with English as a second language were shown either horizontally or vertically arranged objects (priming);
• English speakers verified statements in English about temporal relationships faster after horizontal priming than after vertical priming - Mandarin speakers verified English statements faster after vertical priming;

She claimed this showed the Mandarin speakers’ natural thinking affected their response times, even in a second language, and that this supported the weak Whorfian hypothesis (primary language influencing how they thought);
She also noted that language may affect thinking about relations between objects (requires language experience) more than thinking about the features of objects (needs experience perceiving the objects);

January and Kako (2007) failed to replicate Boroditsky’s results:
• They did find that English speakers could be taught quite quickly to think in terms of vertical temporal relations (“Clinton below Reagan”), as reflected by their response times;
• They strongly criticised Boroditsky’s findings on the grounds that if this could happen to English speakers after only 90 exposures, how come the Mandarin speakers still stuck to their way of thinking after many years of speaking English ?

Question 41

Linguistic relativism

Answer 41

Although language doesn’t seem to affect our thought through how we perceive the world, could it affect higher functioning (reasoning, problem-solving etc.) ?

Can labelling things help us reason about them ? Does speaking make us think about what we say ?

Rattermann and Gentner (1998) tested whether language influences cognitive development:
• One (“trained”) group of children aged 3y were taught three labels (“big”, “little”, “tiny”); other (“untrained”) groups of 3y, 4y, 5y were not;
• A group of objects in increasing size was placed in front of the researcher (e.g. 2cm, 4cm, 6cm), and a second group of objects of smaller (but still increasing) size in front of the child (e.g. 1cm, 2cm, 4cm);
• All groups were asked to find a sticker underneath the object in front of them that was in the same position as one of the objects in front of the researcher;
• This requires children to ignore the sizes of the objects and focus on the position;
Example: if the sticker was under the 4cm object in position 2 in front of the researcher, it would be under the 2cm one in position 2 in front of the child, not the 4cm one in position 3;

They found that:
When differently sized objects of the same type were used:
• untrained children showed similar good (over chance) performance across all age ranges;
• the trained group of 3y children did as well as the 5y group;

When complex objects of different types were used:
• the 3y and 4y in untrained groups only performed at chance (i.e. as well as if they just guessed) and the 5y group dropped from 100% to 67%;
• the trained group of 3y children outperformed the 5y group !

They concluded the labels enhanced the 3-year-old’s relational reasoning.
• Slobin (2003) says we think in order to communicate, whether in writing or speech, and choose words to make our meaning clear;
• The expressions used in novels can focus on different aspects of meaning, e.g. English focuses on how things move (“he moved quietly through the shrubbery”) while languages like Spanish use fewer descriptors;
• However cultural writing conventions do not prove cultural differences in thinking.