Task 9 - Language

Question 1

Explicit vs. Implicit communication

Answer 1

Much of what is communicated is expressed in nonverbal gestures, facial expression, and voice tone

HIGH CONTEXT CULTURE
people are deeply involved with each other, and this involvement leads them to have much shared information that guides their behavior
-> Example: Asian culture

LOW CONTEXT CULTURE
relatively less involvement among individuals, and there is less shared information to guide behavior
-> Example: North American and English-speaking cultures

Question 2

Linguistic relativity

Answer 2

WHORFIAN (or linguistic relativity) HYPOTHESIS
Strong version: language determines how we think -> rejected
Weak version: language influences thought -> controversy and research

In many ways, the words that we speak are assumed to affect the ways we think

Question: do people who speak different languages think in different ways?

Studies on linguistic relativity and color perception support weak hypothesis

Studies on linguistic relativity and spatial perception support weak hypothesis (relative direction terms and absolute terms)

PERCEPTIONS OF AGENCY:
in English, people commonly use AGENTIVE DESCRIPTION (“Justin broke the vase”) while in i.e. Spanish the non-agentive expression is more common (“The vase broke itself”)
Studies show that this has an effect on identifying targets who acted (English speakers more accurate than Spanish in recalling who had broken the vase unintentionally)

Question 3

How language shapes thought

Answer 3

Different languages might impact different cognitive abilities
One’s mother tongue does indeed mold the way on thinks about many aspects of the world, including space and time
Differences in cognitive ability might be explainable by language

The way we think influences the way we speak and vice versa
Studies have shown that bilinguals change how they see the world depending on which language they are speaking
What researchers have been calling “thinking” actually appears to be a collection of linguistic and non-linguistic processes - result: there may not be a lot of adult human thinking were language does not play a role

Question 4

Foreign-language effect

Answer 4

= Using a foreign language affects the contributions of intuition and deliberation to our decisions

this effect has been explored in 3 domains:

1: Language in which information is presented affects people’s treatment of losses, gain and risk
2: Foreign-language contexts affect the way we make sense of the vents we encounter in the world
- HOT-HAND FALLACY: tendency to expect a positive outcome after a series of prior outcomes, even when the events are independent
3: Foreign-language processing prompts more utilitarian choices than native-language processing

ORIGIN
Foreign-language effect has been interpreted in context of dual-process theories of decision making
Reading, writing, listening, and speaking are more costly and largely less fluent in a foreign language than in a native language
Situations that involve processing difficulties are less subject to the impact on intuition and prompt more deliberation
Emotion is another factor associated with foreign language processing that can alter the interaction between intuition and deliberation
Processing difficulty and emotionality may have collateral effect on the way people relate to and construe a given situation

Question 5

Relationship between language, culture and thought

Answer 5

In cultural psychology, culture means “narratives”, “meaning systems”, “systems of thought”, “cultural worldview”, “communication styles” or “self-constructs”

Language is considered to be an inseparable collection of elements consisting of words, grammar, pragmatics, and narrative styles, together functioning as a medium through which cultural views and culture specific worldviews are reflected

TRENDS IN CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY
Cultural psychologists within social psychology have been interested in how culture affects thought
Focus is on the effect of language on socio-cultural behaviors, rather than on effects of language on cognition in general
Treat “language” as a collection of narrative that reflect culture-specific value systems and worldviews
European and American cultures value an analytic thinking style and hence objects are singled out from the background in everyday discourse
Begun to capture the influence of culture on fine, micro-level cognitive processes, employing methodologies commonly used in cognitive psychology and neuroscience
Tend not to consider the influence of language separately from the influences of culture

INTERACTION BETWEEN CULTURE AND LANGUAGE
Researchers from both cognitive and cultural psychology side have begun to ask overarching questions from interdisciplinary perspectives
-> Wall between cognitive psychology and culture psychology has begun to crumble as researchers on both sides reach toward common grounds where they can stand on the same plane to investigate the role of culture and language, sharing theoretical assumptions and methodologies for overarching questions both at the macro and micro level of knowledge representations and cognitive processes

Question 6

What is different about bilingual minds?

Answer 6

Bilinguals are better at…
…Symbol manipulation and reorganization
…METALINGUISTIC AWARENESS - solving linguistic problems based on understanding such concepts as the difference between form and meaning
…Executive control

Monolinguals are better at...
...Verbal skills
...Large vocabulary
...Picture-naming tasks
...SEMANTIC FLUENCY - comprehending and producing words

Question 7

Language processing in Bilinguals

Answer 7

JOINT ACTIVATION OF LANGUAGES
Logical Possibility for organization of a bilingual mind is that it consists of two independently-represented language systems that are uniquely accessed in response to the context
Fluent bilinguals show some measure of activation in both languages and some interaction between them at all times

LINGUISTIC PROCESSING
Joint activation creates an attention problem that does not exist for monolinguals
Bilingual speaker also has to select the correct language from competing options
Thus, ordinary linguistic processing more effortful for bilingual

NON-LINGUISTIC PROCESSING
Need to resolve competition and direct attention is primarily the responsibility of general cognitive systems in particular executive functions

CONSEQUENCES OF JOINT ACTIVATION
How executive system achieves a linguistic selection in the context of joint activation is through inhibition of the non-target language
Two models:
1. INHIBITORY CONTROL MODEL: based on supervisory attentional system and extends a domain-general and resource-limited attention system to the management of competing languages
Consistent with local and global inhibition (described in Literature)
2. BILINGUAL INTERACTIVE MODEL
Uses computer simulation to mode lexical selection from both intralingual and extra lingual competitors

Question 8

Foreign-language effect on moral judgment

Answer 8

Moral dilemmas embody a tension between

1. Deontological prescriptions, that forbid certain behaviors regardless of their consequences
2. Utilitarian prescriptions, concerned with bringing about the greatest good for the greatest number of people

Responses to moral dilemmas spend on whether these decisions are made in a foreign or native language
-> MORAL FOREIGN LANGUAGE EFFECT: bilingual speakers are more likely to endorse what appears to be utilitarian moral decision when responding in a foreign language than when responding in their native language
-> Would you kill one person to save five –> “yes” in foreign language
18% were willing to do so when presented in their native language, while 44% were willing when presented in foreign language

REASONS FOR THAT EFFECT
A dual process framework was adopted as a tool to consider possible underlying mechanisms:
System 1: intuitive processing -> rule based, deontological proscriptions
System 2: deliberative processing -> utilitarian judgments

BLUNTED-DEONTOLOGY ACCOUNT
foreign language use affects moral decisions by reducing the emotional or heuristic processing characteristics of System 1. A reduction in emotional processing when participants use a foreign language may increase their willingness to answer in a utilitarian manner

HEIGHTENED-UTILITARIANISM ACCOUNT
foreign language use affects moral decisions by reducing the emotional or heuristic processing characteristics of System 2. Responding in a foreign language increases feelings of processing difficulty which promotes greater analytic thinking

PROBLEM: the methods used by moral psychologists do not separate deontological from utilitarian responses, which led to different interpretations of results
RESEARCH GOAL: separate deontological responding and utilitarian responding in order to understand how foreign language use affects moral judgment

Method, procedure and Results provided in Literature

–> The use of foreign language affects not just moral choice but decision making in general