This is a summary of block 3.4 Language and Brain (Brain and Cognition specialisation). I also included notes from our professor for several topics. It includes all 18 articles, Carroll theoretical background chapters and 4 lectures.
Summary
3.4 Language and Brain
Problem 1: Language and Thought
Carroll (2008) – Chapter 14: Language, Culture, and Cognition
- The Whorf hypothesis the structure of a language determines a native speaker’s worldview. Language
shapes thought.
- Studies of color terms have not provided strong support for the Whorf hypothesis. Other studies of the
lexicon are more consistent with the hypothesis.
Introduction (Exam question)
- Two language examples (Russian – light blue and dark blue) what would happen if we made Russians and
English speakers to do in a discrimination task, if the Whorf hypothesis is true?
Whorfian examples
- Lexical Examples: Differentiation: the number of words in a given domain (for example, colors, birds,
fruits) in a lexicon. A more highly differentiated domain has more words, some of which express finer
distinctions.
Whorf: eskimos would have 1000 different words for snow, falling snow or slushy snow.
Martin: The number of words in a lexicon varies with how one defines the word. If we only
count root words (free morphemes), we will get one number, but if we count each suffixed
version of each root word, the estimate will rise dramatically.
- Lexical differences lead to differences in thinking.
- Grammatical examples: An example of grammatical diversity concerns the extent to which a language
uses word order or morphology to signal meaning. In English, the vast majority of sentences use a
subject-verb-object (SVO) order. For a speaker of English, languages that violate the SVO order may
seem unnatural (counter factual reasoning)
- Count nouns refer to bodies with definite outlines (a tree, a stick, a hill), whereas mass nouns refer to
objects without clear boundaries (for example, air, water, rain). Linguistically, the distinction is that count
nouns take the plural morpheme, whereas mass nouns cannot. We can make mass nouns plural as well by
saying bodies of water or rain drops.
- For example, even though some objects, such as butter and meat, have clear boundaries, they are treated
grammatically as mass nouns (for example, two sticks of butter, not two butters).
Linguistic determinism and linguistic relativity (exam question – weak or the strong one)
- The Whorf hypothesis consists of two parts, linguistic determinism and linguistic relativity.
- Linguistic determinism: language determines certain nonlinguistic cognitive processes.
- Linguistic relativity: the cognitive processes that are determined are different for different languages.
- Strong: language determines cognition. The presence of linguistic categories creates cognitive categories.
- Weak: the presence of linguistic categories influences the ease with which various cognitive operations
are performed. Certain thought processes may be more accessible or more easily performed by members
of one linguistic community relative to those of a different linguistic community.
Color Terms
- Some languages, such as English, have many color terms, and others have as few as two.
- Codability: the length of a verbal expression. Some languages have single words to refer to a particular
object or event, whereas others do not.
- Brown (1958) suggested a relationship between the frequency of usage of a verbal expression, its length
(codability), and the ease with which it may be used.
Experiments
- Rosch argued that focal colors are more perceptually salient than nonfocal colors and that this salience,
influences the codability and memorability of a color. Both groups’ memory for focal colors was better
than for nonfocal colors.
- Brown and Lenneberg: colors that evoked long names (that is, those less codable) were named with
hesitation, with disagreement from one person to another, with inconsistency from one time to another.
- Lucy and Schweder found no differences between focal and nonfocal colors in a short-term recognition
memory experiment, although they noted differences in long-term recognition.
- Kay & Regier: There are universal constraints on color categories, but linguistic differences within those
constraints affect color cognition and perception.
, - Zipf’s law: The length of a word is negatively correlated with its frequency of usage. That is, the more
frequently a word is used in a language, the shorter the word (measured either in phonemes or syllables).
Number Terms
- The greater regularity of Asian languages suggests that children might have an easier time acquiring
number names than their English-speaking counterparts.
- Miura experiment: On the first trial, the children were asked, in their native language, to read a number
on a card and then to show that number in the blocks. Miura distinguished three approaches to the task.
1. A canonical approach was one that placed no more than nine unit blocks in the one’s position, such
as using four tens blocks and two unit blocks for 42.
2. A noncanonical approach was one that used some combination of tens blocks and more than nine
unit blocks, such as three tens blocks and 12 units blocks for 42.
3. A one-to-one collection used only unit blocks, such as 42 unit blocks.
Results: Japanese children were more than twice as likely as U.S. children to use canonical
approaches on the first trial. The U.S. children tended to use one-to-one collections on the first
trial. When prodded to generate a second approach, the U.S. children developed canonical
approaches.
- Conclusion: the way that languages represent numbers influences mathematical thinking.
- The language one learns plays a role in mathematics education. Miura stresses that the way one thinks
about numbers is fundamentally different in Chinese versus English.
Spatial Terms
- Some spatial words are generalized rather rapidly.
- Both (English and Korean) groups of children began using spatial terms around 14 to 16 months of age,
they used spatial terms in different ways.
- English-speaking children distinguished between putting things into containers and putting them onto
surfaces, but paid no attention to whether the object fit the container tightly or loosely.
- The Korean learners, distinguished between tight and loose containment.
- Hespos and Spike: categories exist prior to language experience and are then enhanced or diminished by
language experience.
- Levinson: Absolute terms refer to the location of an object in space irrespective of the location of a
person (for example, north/south). Relative terms indicate the relationship between an object in space and
a person (for example, in front of me, to the left of her). Intrinsic terms refer to objects in relation to
various object coordinates (such as behind the house, at the tip of the post).
All three are familiar to English speakers, but Levinson points out that not all languages use all
three frames.
Time
- Boroditsky: Mandarin speakers were faster to confirm that March comes before April if they had just
seen a vertical array than if they had seen a horizontal array.
- The reverse was true for English speakers.
- These results on the lexicon are fundamentally supportive of the Whorf hypothesis.
Summary
- There is some evidence for Whorf’s hypothesis at the lexical level.
- Language influences the perception and perhaps the memory for color.
- Asian languages represent numbers differently than English. Children acquiring Japanese and Chinese are
better at counting than English-speaking children between 11 and 99.
Grammatical Influences on Cognition
- Counterfactual reasoning: the ability to reason about an event that is contrary to fact.
- Bloom’s thesis was that because the Chinese language does not explicitly mark the counterfactual,
Chinese speakers would experience greater difficulties with counterfactual reasoning.
- Bloom experiment: Chinese and U.S. college students were presented with a story that involved a Greek
philosopher who did not know Chinese, but if he had, he would have been influenced by Chinese culture
and logic. One version of the story could be interpreted in either a counterfactual or a noncounterfactual
way. The participants were then asked a series of questions to assess their understanding of the stories.
Bloom found that 98% of the U.S. students interpreted the story counterfactually, only 6% of the Chinese
students did so.
- Whorfian effects can be observed when more habitual forms of thought are assessed.
,Grammatical Marking of Form
- Carroll and Casagrande (1958) compared Navaho and English. They observed that in Navaho, the form
of the verb for handling an object varies with the form or shape of the object. The verb varies if the object
is a long flexible object (such as a piece of string) versus a long rigid object (such as a stick) or a flat
flexible object (such as a cloth).
The interesting result was that the Navaho children did group the objects based on form at an
earlier age than the English-speaking children.
Grammatical Marking of Objects and Substances
- Soja, Carey, and Spelke tested the hypothesis that prelinguistic children see objects differently than
shapes.
- The results showed that the children were quite capable of distinguishing between objects and substances.
- Lucy: First, because the plural is used with greater regularity and for a wider array of referents in English,
he hypothesizes that English speakers should habitually attend to the number of various objects of
reference more than Yucatec speakers. Second, he hypothesizes that English speakers would be more
sensitive to shape than to substance, whereas Yucatec speakers would be just the opposite.
English speakers grouped together those alternatives that are treated the same way linguistically
(that is, with the plural morpheme). In contrast, Yucatec speakers attended to substance more than
shape.
Grammatical Marking of Gender
- Martinez and Shatz: They presented Spanish and English children with pictures of animate and
inanimate objects and asked to put them into groups.
Roughly half of the children in each language sorted the pictures into animate and inanimate
groups. But there were also differences: One third of the Spanish-speaking children sorted by
grammatical gender, whereas none of the English speakers did so.
- Participants were asked to describe, in English, objects that were either grammatically masculine or
feminine in their native language. For example, key is masculine in German and feminine in Spanish. The
native German speakers called keys hard and heavy, whereas Spanish speakers used terms such as little,
lovely, and tiny.
- Conclusion: people’s thinking about objects is influenced by the seemingly arbitrary assignment of a
noun to be masculine or feminine in one’s native language. Effects of grammatical gender on
classification are not limited to animate objects.
Conclusion
- The Whorf hypothesis is clearly enjoying a resurgence. Although earlier studies found negative or
inconclusive results, recent studies have generally been supportive of the concept of linguistic relativity.
- These studies provide some support for the weak version of the Whorf hypothesis.
Articles
Turning the Tables: Language and Spatial Reasoning – Li & Gleitmann (1)
Abstract
- Aim: Trying to refute the Whorf hypothesis.
- Article starts by discussing early findings by Brown and Levinson. Brown and Levinson found that Dutch
people uses egocentric references and Tenejapan speakers uses absolute language, and this affects their
performance on cognitive tasks. Dutch people will be egocentric and use relative judgement, whereas,
Tenejapan (allocentric and geocentric or non-body centered) speakers will have absolute responses in the
animal task.
- Brown and Levinson found a 1-1 relation between language and spatial tasks this was considered as
evidence for Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. They support that language is the key. Since there is a language
difference between Dutch and Tenejapan, it causes spatial differences.
- Li and Gleitman: causation do not mean correlation. They suggested that the environment could be a third
variable. By manipulating the environment, you can make people behave differently. If there are a very
salient environmental cue people could use them as reference. If they are alone and have nothing around
them, and the only point of reference is oneself they would be egocentric and respond in a relative
manner.
- Spatial reasoning is strongly affected by the spatial lexicon in everyday use in a community.
Users of these two types of spatial systems solve rotation problems in different ways, ways
predicted by the language-particular lexicons (egocentric and allocentric)
, Introduction
- Sapir: “real world” is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group.
- Do differences in how people talk result in differences in how they think? Could the cross-linguistically
observed differences in spatial categorization influence nonlinguistic spatial categorization?
Spatial Reasoning in Varying Frames of Reference
- The experimental question was whether we could induce Tenejapan-like and Dutch like spatial
reasoning behavior in this single population (Americans) by appropriate changes of the spatial contexts in
which they are tested?
The Man and The Tree Task – Experiment 1
- Aim: is to find what kind of spatial language people who speaks a specific language use?
- English speakers are relative speakers (egocentric), but they also use some intrinsic phrases (allocentric).
Egocentric - looking from the self (to my right); aka relative Dutch
Absolute - using the environment (north, south, east, west etc.) Tenejapans
Intrinsic - object-centered (on the hill, behind the tree etc.) Dutch
Allocentric - absolute and intrinsic Tenejapan
An Experimental Paradigm (Peterson et al)
- The subjects memorize the positions of items in an array shown to them.
- The array is then removed. After a brief delay, the subjects are turned
around (180 degrees) and asked to recall the original array.
- The subject is now handed the three original animals in random order and
asked to position them in “the same way as before.”
- The experimenter set up three of the animals on the Stimulus Table, as the subject watched. The subject
studied this new array if he liked, followed by a 30-second delay. The subject was then swiveled on her
chair 180 degrees to face the Recall Table, which was empty, and handed the three animals in random
order.
Method and Results
- Results: English & Dutch speakers used mostly relative references, some intrinsic. They
did not use absolute.
- The majority of the Tenejapans chose the absolute response for all five trials.
Limitations
- Language distinction (absolute versus relative) is influencing reasoning in a very
dramatic way. However, it is possible that some third variable that differs between the
subject populations is responsible both for the linguistic difference between them, and
for the way they habitually go about solving spatial tasks.
- Specifically, each language population was tested in its own community. For example,
the Tenejapan population was tested on its hill, out of doors. The Dutch population,
presumably more used to a school-like situation, was tested indoors in a laboratory
room. Therefore, environment can be a confounding factor.
Experiment 2A: Strengthening the Landmark Cues
- 3 conditions: blinds pulled down, blinds-up (both indoors) and outdoor.
- Blinds down: since people do not have anything to compare their claims (blinds down,
can’t see anything) they will use more relative (egocentric) speaking. Americans used
the expected response from them.
- Blinds up: half of the Americans always used egocentric and the other half used
allocentric (u-shaped graph).
- Outdoor: almost everyone used more absolute responses, half of the population had 0
relative responses.
- Results: The subjects now evidenced a bias toward absolute responses (used them
more)
- The difference previously obtained by Brown and Levinson for Dutch versus
Tenejapan speakers is reproduced here between groups of Americans when they
essentially have no landmarks (and thus act like Dutchmen) versus when they have
strong landmark cues (and thus act like Tenejapans).
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