Language and Thought

Question 1

how do languages differ?

Answer 1

sound structure
prosody
vocabulary
grammar

Question 2

how many languages are there?

Answer 2

7000

Question 3

sapir-whorf (linguistic relativity) hypothesis

Answer 3

different language speakers experience the world differently, meaning their language shapes cognitive processes to influence thinking

Question 4

how did winawer (2007) support the sapir-whorf hypothesis?

Answer 4

confirmed languages influence how people think by finding different colour names

Question 5

how does language learning influence thought in preverbal infants?

Answer 5

since language learning begins in utero – they recognise mother tongue, sound structure, and word meanings before they can speak

Question 6

categorisation

Answer 6

the prelinguistic ability to group distinct objects to classes based on shared features.
Language provides a tool to express and communicate categories, by teaching them to others

Question 7

waxman and markow (1995) preferential looking in 9-12m infants

Answer 7

displayed a novelty preference during test

• means they must have grouped the familiarised objects into one category, and recognised the new exemplar as a member of this category

Question 8

when is there a principled link between language and categorisation?

Answer 8

at 12m

this link is sufficiently constrained to pick out linguistic signals and powerful enough to promote abstraction

Question 9

ferry (2010) preferential looking in 3-4m

Answer 9

3m displayed familiarity preference
4m displayed novel preference

as age increases, infants become more attracted to novel words

Question 10

what does listening to language boost?

Answer 10

cognition

non-linguistic sounds fail to have the same effect

Question 11

how does the mechanism for categorisation of novel words begin?

Answer 11

infants who hear novel words will begin to look for commonalities between objects (althaus, 2016).

Question 12

what are the main ways of encoding spatial orientation?

Answer 12

relative (to the speaker)
absolute (in terms of cardinal directions)

Question 13

what did levinson (1997) find about dutch and tzeltal speakers?

Answer 13

dutch speakers preserve relative encoding
tzeltal speakers preserve absolute encoding

• people memoriese arrays using an orientation coding system prevalent in their spoken language

Question 14

what did haun (2011) find about 8y?

Answer 14

struggle to switch encoding languages

by this age, their language seems to have a strong influence on how they remember spatial orientation

Question 15

how can language be used to shape spatial semantic categories?

Answer 15

english-learning toddlers lost the sensitivity to space distinctions expressed in korean, but not english, by 3y

Question 16

which number systems are independent from language?

Answer 16

non-symbolic (AMS; OIS)
we know this from evidence from animals, preverbal infants, and uneducated adults

Question 17

which number systems are dependent on language?

Answer 17

symbolic number representations

these support precise representations and recording numbers

Question 18

what did miller (1995) find about number naming systems and maths skills?

Answer 18

no relationship between specific languages and early maths skills

but some number naming systems (mandarin) are easier to learn than others (english)

Question 19

why is english a difficult number naming system to learn?

Answer 19

the complexity of english number names presents obstacles to understanding the base-10 principle of number representation