Language & Thought

Language & Thought

Dr. Yan Jing Wu

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Experiment 1

1. Languages in the world

2. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

3. Electrophysiology of cognition

4. ERP evidence for linguistic relativity

5. Toward a theory of language-thought interaction

Thierry and Wu, PNAS, in pressLanguageLevels of representationOutline

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Experiment 1

1. Languages in the world

2. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

3. Electrophysiology of cognition

4. ERP evidence for linguistic relativity

5. Toward a theory of language-thought interaction

Thierry and Wu, PNAS, in pressLanguageLevels of representationOutline

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Experiment 1

1. Up to 7000 languages

2. From 10 major language families

3. More than half of world population are bilinguals or multilinguals

4. A language dies every two weeks

Thierry and Wu, PNAS, in pressLanguageLevels of representationLanguage ecology

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Experiment 1Thierry and Wu, PNAS, in pressLanguage

Levels of representationDifferences between languages

Phonology, orthography, grammar..

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Ways to categorize the world

Alligator or crocodile?

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Anyone speak Arabic?

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Certain expressions are deeply engrained in the speaker’s culture.

The Eskimo language has a large number of words for the word snow.

‘apun’= “snow on the ground”‘qanikca’= “hard snow on the ground”, ‘utak’= “block of snow”.

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The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

Edward SapirBenjamin Lee Whorf

Language is not only for expression

but also helps organise our

thought. Diverse languages impose

different conceptual

categories on their speakers.

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1. Linguistic determinism (strong version): The language we use determines the way we view and think

about the world around us. Learning a new language changes our ways of thinking.

2. Linguistic relativity (weak version): People who speak different languages perceive and

experience the world differently relative to their linguistic backgrounds.

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

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Carmichael, Hogan & Walter (1932) The way an ambiguous figure is described influences how it is later recalled.

The Sapir-Whorf HypothesisBehavioural evidence

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The Sapir-Whorf HypothesisCarmichael et al., 1932

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Glucksberg & Weisberg (1962)The way a problem is described can influence the salience of potential solutions.


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The Sapir-Whorf HypothesisGlucksberg & Weisberg (1962)

Fix the candle onto the wall

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The Sapir-Whorf HypothesisGlucksberg & Weisberg (1962)

Performance enhanced if..

Available materials described in a different and unaccustomed linguistic structure, such as ‘box and tacks’, rather than ‘box of tacks’.

‘on the table there is a candle, a box of tacks, and a book of matches...’.

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Glucksberg & Weisberg (1962)The way a problem is described can influence the salience of potential solutions.

Brown & Levinson 1993Spatial reasoning skills are dependent on language characteristics.


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English- Egocentric: left, right, over there, by me- Allocentric: north, south, east, west

Tzeltal (Chiapas, Mexico)-Allocentric only: uphill, downhill, along


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“Make it the same”

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Ambiguous instructions.Answer reveals which reference

frame you are using

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The Sapir-Whorf HypothesisBrown & Levinson 1993

1. The majority (60%) of Tenejapans speakers restructured the table according to the Absolute rearrangement.

2. Only a small percent of Dutch speakers restructured the table according to the Absolute rearrangement. The majority of them restructured it relatively.

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1.Some cognitive tasks may be affected by implicit access to the participants’ native language (hence the importance to use nonlinguistic tasks).

2.Differences in nonlinguistic tasks may be the result of ‘life-experience’ due to background difference, rather than languages.

3.Behavioural measurements only show the ‘end-product’ of cognitive processes.

The Sapir-Whorf HypothesisSo far so good?

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Electrophysiology of CognitionIntroducing Event-Related Potentials

TriggersResponseButtons

AuditoryStimulator

A/D Converter

VEOG

Amplifiers

Head box

Acquisition PCS R S RStimulation

PC

Visual Stimulation

The recording of overt responses is not mandatory

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ERP Components

Early components strongly relate to sensory brain activation and therefore depend on the physical properties of stimuli

Late components are generated by larger networks in the brain and correspond to higher processes (e.g. decision, retrieval of meaning, working memory, etc.)

N stands for negative, P for positive. Numbers either indicate order of occurrence or classical latency of peak in specific experimental conditions

Early Late

200 400 600

-5uV

+5uV

SOT

Time (ms)

0

N1

P2

N2 N3

P1

N1

VisualERP

Auditory ERP

Electrophysiology of Cognition

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Faces

ScenesObjects

(ms)

-100 150 400 650 900

µV

0.0

-2.5

2.5

Cz

N170

P1P2

Relating ERPs to Cognition


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Relating ERPs to Cognition


N1

P2

SOT

P1

100 200 300 400 500 600

Time (ms)

+5

-5

0

Am

pli

tud

e (µ

V)

PO3P3

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The Greek blue(s):

‘Ble’ dark blue

‘Ghalazio’ light blue

Words and colour perception

ERP evidence for linguistic relativity

Does the terminology for colours affect people’s perception of them?

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targetdeviantstandard

Stimulus duration 200 ms Inter-stimulus duration 800 msTime

Block 1

Block 2

Block 3

Block 4

Respond by pressing one button when you see a ‘circle’ and another button when you see a ‘square’.

Ignore their colours.

ERP evidence for linguistic relativity

Thierry et al., 2009

Words and colour perception

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green standards

blue standards

ER

P A

mp

litu

de (

µV

)

Time (ms) Time (ms)

green deviants

blue deviants

Native English Native Greek

600

3

5

4

2

1

0

-1

3

5

4

2

1

0

-1

4002000-1006004002000-100

ERP evidence for linguistic relativityWords and colour perception

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green standards

blue standards

green deviants

blue deviants

Time (ms)Time (ms)

Short-stay Long-stay

0

1.5

3

-1.5

0

1.5

3

-1.5

Am

pli

tud

e (

µV

)

10008002000 400 60010008002000 400 600

Greek-English bilingual group split by duration of stay

ERP evidence for linguistic relativityWords and colour perception

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ERP evidence for linguistic relativityWords and object perception

cupmug bowl

taza ból

English

Spanish

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3, 4 or 5

300 - 500 ms

300 ms

subject responds


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Spanish

English

Negativity related to deviant, only for English speakers.

terminology influences early pre-attentional stages of object processing

DRN

standarddeviant

cupmug

Language-specific terminology affects object perception.


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Toward a theory for language-thought

language produces transient modulation of ongoing perceptual processing – the label-feedback effect (Lupyan, 2012).

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Information in the brain travels in a feedforward manner but not only.

Language produces transient modulation of ongoing perceptual processing.

Visual processing can be influenced by higher-level cognition

Evidence that prefrontal areas can respond to stimuli before early visual cortex.


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mugmug


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Recommended Readings

Whorf, Benjamin (1956), John B. Carroll (ed.), ed., Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf, MIT Press

Athanasopoulos, Panos (2009), "Cognitive representation of colour in bilinguals: The case of Greek blues", Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 12 (1): 83–95,

Also.. in Deutscher, Guy (26 August 2010), Does Your Language Shape How You Think?, New York Times Magazine, Aug 26, 2010

Thank you for your attention

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Language & Thought

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