Language and Thought Plus Reading

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Language and Thought Plus Reading

• Brandon Beltz
• April 20, 2005

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Lecture Outline

• Language and Thought
• Early studies
• Concrete thought
• Color recognition
• Later studies
• Abstract thought
• Space and Time
• Reading
• Basics
• Saccades, fixations, etc
• Model of reading
• (Just and Carpenter)
• Improving your reading skills
• Speed
• Comprehension

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Language and Thought
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Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis(Whorf)

• Language shapes the way people think about events
  in the world.
• Does language constrain thought?
• e.g Does our grammar limit what we can think
  about?
• Can we think about ideas that our language
  doesnt name?
• e.g. Can we think about concepts outside of our
  mental lexicon and grammar?
• Strong version
• Certain thoughts in one language are impossible
  in other languages
• Weaker version
• Some languages are more conducive to certain
  thoughts than other languages

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Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis

• Early Studies
• Color Recognition Study
• Roger et al. (1954)
• Did you see this color before?
• Memory was better for labeled colors than
  nonlabeled ones.

Does a cultures words for color affect what
people actually see?
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Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis

• Color Recognition Study
• (Heider, 1972)
• Examined cross-cultural perception of colors
• Dani (New Guinea) color words
• light, dark
• English color words
• white, black, red, blue, green, yellow, etc.

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Color Recognition Study(Heider, 1972)

• Recognition memory test
• Participants given color chips to study, then
  later discriminated between two choices.
• Sometimes distracter chips would cross color
  lines, sometimes, they would be from the same
  color line

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Color Recognition Task
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Color Recognition Study(Heider, 1972)

• Language color terms appeared to have little
  effect on recognition.
• Dani and English speakers performed equally well
  (or not) regardless of whether or not the
  distractor colors crossed color lines.
• Evidence against relativist view of language

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Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis

• Recent Studies
• Looked for small biases in terms of processing
  costs
• Classification of objects follows language
  patterns
• English vs. Maya
• Chinese and English
• perceptual vs. material classifiers
• Zhang and Schmitt (1998)
• Gender grammatical systems (e.g. German, Spanish)
• People more likely to attribute actual gender
  characteristics to drawings of objects than
  non-gender grammatical language speakers.
• Does ones language affect the way people think
  about time?
• Boroditsky (2001)

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Conceptions of Time

• Time is unidimensional (one way) across cultures
• e.g. We all experience aging in the same way
  birth, childhood, adulthood, seniority, death.
• We often use spatial terms to discuss the order
  of temporal events.
• ex. past -gt behind future -gt ahead
• That is we use a spatial metaphor for time

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Spatial Metaphor

• Multidimensional
• narrow/wide, right/ left
• being outdoors
• Rarely used to describe time

• Unidimensional
• ahead/ behind, up/ down
• a very narrow hall
• often used to describe time

Screenshots from Prince of Persia game
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Does ones language affect the way people think
about time?(Boroditsky, 2001)

• Participants
• Native English speakers
• Native Mandarin Chinese speakers English 2nd
  language

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Space and Time in English
some time later earlier (past)
Horizontal spatial metaphor when talking about
time -Im glad the exam is behind me -Im
looking forward to the summer
image www.dennisflood.com
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Space and Time in Mandarin
Vertical spatial metaphor when talking about
time -Im glad the exam is above me -Im
looking down to the summer
image www.danielboling.com/
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Space and Time Examples
from Boroditsky (2001)
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Do differences in spatial language to talk about
time have short-term implications for online
(millisecond) processing?
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Experiment Method(Boroditsky, 2001)

• Task
• 1 Prime (spatial judgement)
• 2 Target (temporal judgement)
• Measurement
• Reaction times

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Experiment Method(Boroditsky, 2001)

• Prime
• Spatial relationship judgements
• Participants answered true/false

Horizontal Prime
Vertical Prime
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Experiment Method(Boroditsky, 2001)

• Target
• Judge statements about the order of the months.
• Participants answered true/false
• February comes earlier than May
• May comes later than February

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Experiment Logic

• People think about time in terms of space.
• Therefore, using spatial judgements as primes
  should affect later judgements of time.
• Furthermore, the type of prime should affect
  English and Mandarin speakers differently

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Predictions?
If language does affect thought, how will the
primes affect the processing of the targets?
?
?
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Results
Slower Faster
Reaction Time
English Speakers
Mandarin Speakers
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Experiment 2 Method(Boroditsky, 2001)

• Interested in other short-term affects of
  language and processing.
• Used the same experiment as before, but with one
  addition
• Native English speakers were trained to think
  about time in vertical terms and were later
  tested.

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Experiment 2 Method(Boroditsky, 2001)

• Vertical training
• Ps were told they would learn a new way to think
  about time.
• Were given example sentences to study.
• Monday is above Tuesday
• Monday is higher than Tuesday
• Ps performed same task as previous experiment

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Results
?
Vertical English
English Speakers
Mandarin Speakers
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Discussion

• Experiment 1
• Different usages of spatial language to talk
  about time had different processing effects on
  English and Mandarin speakers.
• Experiment 2
• When English speakers became Mandarin
  temporarily, they exhibited similar effects of
  processing as Mandarin speakers.

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Summary Space and Time

• Our concept of space is based on sensory
  experiences.
• Space is concrete and easy to describe in
  linguistic terms.
• Time is abstract and not based on sensory
  experiences.
• We experience time through our memories
• Spatial terms act as a metaphor and aids in
  thinking about the abstract notion of time.

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Language and Thought Summary

• Early studies focused on color perception.
• Color is concrete term affected at physiological
  level by the senses
• People experience concrete terms similarly
  because of similar sensory processes.
• Languages can arbitrarily define physical
  properties of objects (e.g. color), but people
  can adapt their terminology.
• No significant influence of language.

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Language and Thought Summary

• Later studies focused more on abstract thought.
• Classification of objects, gender grammatical
  system, time and space.
• Abstract thought has more potential to be
  affected by language because it is more removed
  from sensory processes.
• These studies found moderate differences of
  online processing based on language.
• Conclusion The studies support a weak version of
  the Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis

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Reading
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Reading Overview

• Differences between reading and speech?
• Are they the same process?
• What are the advantages of written language for
  society?

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The reading process

• What kinds of processes did you notice?
• How fast were your eyes scanning the text?
• Were some parts of the text more or less
  difficult?
• What happened when the difficulty changes?
• Did your consciousness keep up with your eyes?
  That is, are you aware of each word you read?
• If you were a scientist interested in studying
  reading, what experiments could you conduct? What
  would you measure?

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Reading experiments

• Early research
• Focused on testing memory for context
• Similar findings as reconstructive memory studies
• Memory for gist good, memory for details poor
• Current research
• Focus on online processing
• Eye movements

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Eye Movements

• Purpose of eye movements
• Place the foveal region of eye on the text we
  wish to process

http//www.artlex.com/ArtLex/b/images/
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Eye Tracking Equipment
http//www.mpi.nl/world/tg/eye-tracking/eye-tracki
ng.html
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Eye Movement Example
Saccades and Fixations
Eye Movements During Reading
http//www.mpi.nl/world/tg/eye-tracking/eye-tracki
ng.html
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Eye Movements

• Saccades
• cover distance of 8 to 9 letters
• Fixations
• Words are processed during fixations and not
  saccades
• Average fixation is 250 ms (4 fixations per
  second)
• Word Difficulty
• Fixation time increases
• Saccades decrease
• Look-back previous info increases

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Eye Movement Assumptions

• Immediacy
• Readers interpret each content word of a text as
  they encounter it in the passage.
• Eye-Mind
• The eye remains fixated on a word as long as the
  word is being actively processed during reading.

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Model of Word Reading(Just and Carpenter)

• Evidence exists for 2 levels of processing
• Word level
• Comprehension level
• (propositions)
• That is people must comprehend words within
  sentences and sentences within bigger ideas.
• Model shows interactions with memory processes.

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Model of Word Reading(Just and Carpenter)
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Model of Word Reading(Just and Carpenter)
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How to Improve Your Reading

• What information do you want to gain from the
  document?
• Do you need technical accuracy or not?

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Reading Performance
Comprehension (accuracy)
Speed
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How to Improve Your Reading

• Speed
• Focus on your eye movements
• Increase the number of words in each gaze
• Hold the text further away
• Reduce Fixation Time
• Practice!
• Reduce Skip-Back
• Use a pencil or pointer as a guide.
• Practice!
• We get lazy because we know we can always read it
  again.
• Do not allow yourself to go back

http//www.mindtools.com/speedrd.html
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How to Improve Your Reading

• Comprehension
• Use memory to your advantage!
• Use prior knowledge, schemas, scripts, etc
• Build a knowledge structure beforehand
• 10 minutes of simple pre-reading can save 20
  minutes in rereading.
• Preview titles, subheadings
• Preview graphics, figures
• Preview new vocabulary terms
• Look at beginning and ending sentences of
  paragraphs (assuming author is competent)
• All of the above will help prime the information
  for later recognition!

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Structures in Reading Scientific Articles
Title Abstract Introduction Experime
nts method results discussion General
Discussion Conclusion
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Structures in Reading Paragraph Composition

• Introductory/ orienting statement
• supporting point 1
• supporting point 2
• supporting point 3
• Summary/ transition statement