LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT

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LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT

• CORE READING
• Parkin, A. (2000). Essential Cognitive
  Psychology. Psychology Press, Chap 13.
• SUPPLEMENTARY READING
• Davidoff, J., Davies, I., Roberson, D. (1999).
  Colour categories in a stone-age tribe. Nature,
  398(6724), 203-204.
• Davidoff, J. (2001). Language and perceptual
  categorisation. Trends in Cognitive Science,
  5(9), 382-387.

• AIMS OBJECTIVES
• The aim of this lecture is to review how language
  influences thought from a cross-cultural
  perspective
• At the end of the lecture you will have learned
  about
• The meaning of linguistic relativity
• The Whorfian view of how language constrains our
  thinking
• Evidence for colour categorisaton
• Cross-cultural studies of the linguistic
  relativity hypothesis social cognition

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Color perception is a low level visual process


Blue, green or aquamarine?
Fuzzy boundaries
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Lecture questions

• Does language limit our perception of the world?
• How is use of language culturally constrained?
• Sapir-Whorf hypothesis culture (and language) has
  an effect on thinking.
• Cognition is social

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Language and thought

• The perceptual world is chaotic and so to
  understand the world we categorise input.
• We do this using a linguistic system.
• Language is the medium of human thought.
• Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
• our knowledge about spoken language determines
  how we perceive the world.

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Colour perception

• The question of linguistic relativity can be
  addressed in colour perception tasks.
• Participants from different cultures are given
  tests of color perception/memory.
• If our language determines thinking colour
  perception should be worse in those cultures
  whose languages have few colour terms.

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Colour perception is categorical
red
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Kay and Kempton (1984)

• English participants given coloured chips.
• Colour was varied to fit with one or other side
  of a colour boundary.
• Colour discrimination was good and there was a
  clear categorical boundary where green became
  blue.

• Mexican-Indian tribes called Tarahumara.
• No words for blue and green.
• Colour discrimination was very bad.
• Suggests that a lack of colour names does have an
  influence on colour perception.

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Munsell chips (colour patches)
Typical or focal colors


Light intensity changes constant


similar
dissimilar

similar
similar
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Focal colours

• There is usually widespread agreement about which
  shade of a colour is most typical and this is
  called the focal colour.
• Participants asked to memorise colours.
• Focal colours are recognised better than
  non-focal colours.

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Remember position of colours
focal
nonfocal
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Focal better than nonfocal
focal
nonfocal
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Dani tribe in New Guinea

• People from Dani tribe have two colour words
• MOLA bright warm hues
• MILI dark, cold hues
• Dani people also show a focal colour effect i.e.
  typical colours better.

• Uncertain whether blue is MOLA or MILI but are
  certain that blue is MILI.
• Language does not affect colour perception
  natural categories are universal.

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Rosch (1973, 1975)
Colour categories are universal (language does
not affect perception)




mili
mola
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Language and thought

• The Dani people of New Guinea have only two color
  names and they tend to agree with American
  observers about which colors are particularly
  good examples of categories.
• This result is inconsistent with Whorf's
  hypothesis about the relationship between
  language and thought because having fewer names
  has no impact on colour perception.

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Davidoff et al (1999) Nature Berinmo tribe.
Berinmo
Sydney
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Davidoff et al (1999) Nature
No focal color effects on memory


Berinmo boundary
English boundary


Nol inedible
Wor edible
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Language does affect perception
Wor and nol trained


Wor nol



nol
wor
green
yellow
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Social and cultural effects

• The terminology used by a culture tends to
  reflect their adaptive requirements.
• Eskimos have different names for a large variety
  of types of snow in the arctic.

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Social and cultural effects

• Hanuxoo in the Philippines have many names for
  different varieties of rice.

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Social and cultural effects

• We have many different names for apples, cars,
  mobile telephones, lagers...

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Berinmo
Sydney
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Constructing language

• Social environment has an effect on how we
  construct language.
• It is unlikely language is only medium of thought
  but does affect thinking.
• Can language be reduced to modules in the brain?

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Summary

• Language influences how we think about the world.
• Supports a weak version of Sapir-Whorf
  hypothesis and suggests that language cannot be
  simply innate.
• Cognition can be social.
• The end!