Language 4 Language and Thought

Question 1

What is language

Answer 1

set of spoke, written or signed words - combination of them allows us to communicate meaning/expressions

Question 2

What is thought

Answer 2

ability to reason, plan, make decisions and respond appropriately to complex environmental stimuli

Question 3

Developmental approach- piaget, vygotsky and chomsky

Answer 3

Piaget- believed thought comes first then language
Vygotsky- believed both develop together
Chomsky- believed in universal grammar and an innate faculty of mind (language). Saw language/thought as separate modules, but did see them as linked

Question 4

Evolutionary approach

Answer 4

Other animals/primates shown to demonstrate spatial cognition, time perception, numerical sense, problem solving, theory of mind, but NOT language

Question 5

What was Watson’s (1924) hypothesis

Answer 5

Thinking is essentially sub-vocal talking- speech is thought hypothesis.
If we eliminate speech, we eliminate thought (now outdated though)

Question 6

Early curare study example to test the speech is thought hypothesis (Smith et al, 1947)

Answer 6

Gave a p a curare injection (causes muscle paralysis, especially in mouth). He was unable to produce speech. Afterwards he reported still being able to perceive, remember and answer questions internally, but simply couldn’t move mouth muscles to respond. This showed that thought is still possible without language

Question 7

Case of brother john (1980)

Answer 7

French monk who experienced epileptic seizures. Sever language disruption including his ‘inner speech’ (the inner voice you talk to). BUT he still displayed intact thought, memory, object recognition, complex tool us, follow instructions.
Suggests you can still have thought without overt or covert (inner speech) thought.

Question 8

What is Williams syndrome

Answer 8

Individuals who cannot do basic maths or retrieve sets of objects on request, but their language still in tact

Question 9

Language savant (Christopher famous case)

Answer 9

He learned and spoke 13 foreign languages, but didnt have the capacity to look after himself day to day.
Shows language capability despite impaired cognition.

Savant meaning- extreme skill in something, far above the average- autistic people often exhibit this

Question 10

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

Answer 10

states that the structure of a language determines or greatly influences the modes of thought and behavior characteristic of the culture in which it is spoken.

In other words, a speaker’s language affects their world view/cognition, which may be different to someone speaking another language

Question 11

2 components of Sapir- Whorf Hypothesis

Answer 11

1) Linguistic determinism (strong version)- languages direct thoughts- it’s structures limit and determine human knowledge and thought (can’t see things another way)

2) Linguistic relativity (weak version)-
language a person speaks influences their cognition (i.e. learn different language, see the world differently)

Question 12

Sapir & Whorf were anthropologists- what did their observations of english/american indians find ,regarding language?
Other evidence?

bear in mind that all their findings did not have experimentally tested hypotheses

Answer 12

English express time in terms of units (‘stayed for 10 days’), Hopi people in terms of a continuum (‘stayed until the 11th day’)

> Dani tribe in New Guinea- only have two words for colours in their language (one for light and one for dark).
Found if they gave them the english vocab for colours they were able to learn and understand using these words

> Eskimo language- have more than one word for snow (i.e.snow in the air, snow on the ground). But there was no evidence it means they perceive world differently to others.

Question 13

Duncker task (1945) for language

Answer 13

Reasoning task where p’s given candle and box of nails. Most p’s displayed ‘function fixedness’ of the box, with very few conceptualizing it as a candle holder cos it had nails in it. It was easier if the box was emptied before starting.

Same task then developed- same task but items clearly labelled either ‘box of tacks’ or ‘box and tacks’. The latter description decreased functional fixedness and improved performance.

This evidence suggests linguistic influences affect our thinking and reasoning.

Question 14

Turning table study-

Dutch language speakers and Tenejapans (Levinson and colleagues)

Answer 14

In dutch language- relative frame of reference used i.e. objects spatial location is viewer-centered (always put objects in terms of their location)

Tenejapans (Mayans)- use absolute frame of reference, describe thing in terms of co-ordinates (cardinal directions NESW, i.e. ‘ball is west of chair’), they are constantly aware of their own directional orientation.

In the study it affected their arrangement of the objects
Dutch- showed relative arrangement (i.e. ‘ladybird always left of me’)

Question 15

What advantages do those who use sign language have? (Emmorey, 2002 study)

Answer 15

Tend to have better spatial recognition (mental rotation) and detailed face perception.
Emmorey found that fluent signers are better at face perception/judgement tasks than non-signers- shows sign language influences visual perception

Question 16

Winawer et al (2007) Russians and blue colour study

Answer 16

Russians have names for various different shades of blue-
compared to english speakers, Russians where faster at colour judgement tasks of blue shades.
The advantage was largest for difficult discriminations (colours perceptually close) than for easy discriminations (colours far apart)

Question 17

Similar to Russians colour perception study, what results did Thierry et al (2009) find in their EEG studies, with native english and Greek speakers

Answer 17

Found a visual mismatch negativity (vMMN)- in the ERP values for perceptual deviancy detections (of green and blue dots).

> There was a greater dissociation (distinction) between different shades of blue/green in greeks, whilst english speakers did not show this.
They showed a difference in the N200 level (ERP level associated with initiation of colour perception)
- Supports that early stages of colour perception are unconsciously affected by the terminology specific to the native language

Question 18

Boroditsky et al -grammatical gender study.

English monolinguals ?

Answer 18

Some languages possess grammatical rules of gender for words (i.e. ‘bakery’ in french is feminine, ‘chocolate’ is masculine, vice versa in greek. Care must be taken for gender agreement when constructing sentences in these languages.

English monolingual speakers asked to classift German/Spanish words for objects- they were found to easily be able to classify the correct grammatical gender- despite not doing this in their own language

Question 19

Can grammatical gender assignment spill over into other mental processes- Boroditsy study with Spanish/German /English bilinguals-
Grammatical gender influencing people’s thinking

Answer 19

Given list of objects with oppositve genders in Spanish/German i.e. ‘key’ is masculine in German, feminines in Spanish.
Findings-
Upon generating 3 adjectives for each item in English:
Germans- gave ‘key’ masculine adjectives i.e. hard, heavy and for ‘bridge’ feminine like ‘pretty, ‘elegant’, Opposite found for Spanish speakers

Question 20

What can grammatical gender effect besides influencing our thinking?

Answer 20

Effects social attitudes/behaviours i.e. sexist language perpetuates gender-biased attitudes by defining what we as normal for men/women i.e. firemen (as opposed to firefighters).
> If we use non-gendered words we begin to see people/professions as non-gendered. Gender-fair language (GFL)- contributes to reducing this stereotyping

Question 21

Boroditsky (2001) study on time perception of English/Mandarin speakers

Answer 21

English- consider time as horizontal i.e. ‘move this meeting forward’
Mandarin- consider time as vertical i.e. ‘Xia’ refers to events in the near future, but as ‘descending’ in action

Question 22

What did Boroditsky’s study to test time in Mandarin/English speakers involve

Answer 22

1) First both were presented horizontal/vertical spatial primes (pictures) in a sentence verification task
2) Then given future/past target sentences (in English) i.e. june is earlier than august
3) Findings-
English speakers responded quicker after horizontal prime tirals, whilst mandarin speakers were faster after vertical primes
-Bilinguals of Mandarin (L1)- English (L2)- bias to think about time vertically greater ONLY for those who learnt english later in life.
4) Shows how your native language influences how you think about abstract domains like time. acquisition of semantic biases (like time) decreases with age at which second language exposure begins

Question 23

Behavioural economist Chen (2013) cross-linguistic study- ‘futured/futureless’ & savings rates

Answer 23

• considers English a ‘futured’ language, i.e. verb forms change (it is rained, it rained)
• Mandarin- ‘futureless’ - verb form doesnt change.

Used secondary data on savings rates- found speakers of futureless languages tend to save more (as they regard tomorrow as similar to today), whilst in futured languages, tomorrow considered separate/different, so saving is less likely.
This creates knock on effcets for economic behaviours of populations in different countries