Language & Thought
Dr. Yan Jing Wu

Experiment 1
Levels of representation
Thierry and Wu, PNAS, in press
PSY241 - 2/38
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

Experiment 1
Levels of representation
Thierry and Wu, PNAS, in press
PSY241 - 3/38
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

Experiment 1
Levels of representation
Thierry and Wu, PNAS, in press
PSY241 - 4/38
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

Levels of representation
Phonology, orthography, grammar..
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Levels of representation
Ways to categorize the world
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Alligator or crocodile?

Levels of representation
Ways to categorize the world
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Anyone speak Arabic?

Levels of representation
Ways to categorize the world
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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”.

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
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Edward Sapir
Benjamin Lee Whorf
Language is not only for expression but also helps organise our thought. Diverse languages impose different conceptual categories on their speakers.

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
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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
Behavioural evidence
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Carmichael, Hogan & Walter (1932)
The way an ambiguous figure is described influences how it is later recalled.

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
Carmichael et al., 1932
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The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
Behavioural evidence
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Carmichael, Hogan & Walter (1932)
The way an ambiguous figure is described influences how it is later recalled.
Glucksberg & Weisberg (1962)
The way a problem is described can influence the salience of potential solutions.

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
Glucksberg & Weisberg (1962)
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The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
Glucksberg & Weisberg (1962)
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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...’.

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
Behavioural evidence
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Carmichael, Hogan & Walter (1932)
The way an ambiguous figure is described influences how it is later recalled.
Glucksberg & Weisberg (1962)
The way a problem is described can influence the salience of potential solutions.
Brown & Levinson 1993
Spatial reasoning skills are dependent on language characteristics.

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
Behavioural evidence
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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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The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
Brown & Levinson 1993
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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.

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
So far so good?
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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 ‘endproduct’ of cognitive processes.

Electrophysiology of Cognition
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Introducing Event-Related Potentials
Stimulation
PC
Acquisition
PC
S R S R
Auditory
Stimulator
Visual Stimulation
Response
Buttons
Triggers
VEOG
Head box
A/D Converter
Amplifiers
The recording of overt responses is not mandatory

+5uV
-5uV
0
Electrophysiology of Cognition
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ERP Components
P1
Early
P2
Late
N stands for negative, P for positive. Numbers either indicate order of occurrence or classical latency of peak in specific experimental conditions
Visual
ERP
Early components strongly relate to sensory brain
activation and therefore depend on the physical properties of stimuli
SOT
N1 N1
200
N2
N3
400
Auditory
ERP
Time
(ms)
600
Late components are generated by larger networks in the brain and correspond to
higher processes (e.g. decision, retrieval of meaning, working memory, etc.)

Electrophysiology of Cognition
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Relating ERPs to Cognition
µV Cz
P2
P1
-2.5
0.0
2.5
N170
150 400
Faces
Objects
Scenes
(ms)
-100 650 900

Electrophysiology of Cognition
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Relating ERPs to Cognition
P3
PO3
P2
+5
P1
SOT
0
-5
N1
100 200 300 400 500 600
Time (ms)

ERP evidence for linguistic relativity
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Words and colour perception
The Greek blue(s):
‘Ble’  dark blue
‘Ghalazio’  light blue
Does the terminology for colours affect people’s perception of them?

ERP evidence for linguistic relativity
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Words and colour perception
Respond by pressing one button when you see a ‘circle’ and another button when you see a
‘square’.
Ignore their colours.
Thierry et al., 2009 standard deviant target
Block 1
Block 2
Block 3
Block 4
Inter-stimulus duration 800 ms Time Stimulus duration 200 ms

ERP evidence for linguistic relativity
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Words and colour perception
Native English Native Greek
5
4
3
5
4
3 green standards blue standards green deviants blue deviants
2 2
1 1
0 0
-1
-100 0 200
Time (ms)
-1
400 600
Time (ms)
-100 0 200 400 600

ERP evidence for linguistic relativity
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Words and colour perception
3
Greek-English bilingual group split by duration of stay
Short-stay
3
Long-stay
1.5
1.5
green standards blue standards green deviants blue deviants
0 0
-1.5
-1.5
0
Time (ms)
200 400 600 800 1000 0
Time (ms)
200 400 600 800 1000

ERP evidence for linguistic relativity
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Words and object perception
English mug cup bowl
Spanish taza ból

ERP evidence for linguistic relativity
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Words and object perception
300 ms
300 - 500 ms
3, 4 or 5 subject responds

Spanish
ERP evidence for linguistic relativity
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Words and object perception
English standard deviant
DRN cup mug
Negativity related to deviant, only for English speakers.
terminology influences early preattentional stages of object processing
Language-specific terminology affects object perception.

Toward a theory for language-thought
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Toward a theory for language-thought
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Toward a theory for language-thought
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Language produces transient modulation of ongoing perceptual processing.
Visual processing can be influenced by higher-level cognition
Information in the brain travels in a feedforward manner but not only.
Evidence that prefrontal areas can respond to stimuli before early visual cortex.

Toward a theory for language-thought
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Athanasopoulos, Panos (2009), "Cognitive representation of colour in bilinguals: The case of Greek blues",
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 12 (1): 83–95,
Whorf, Benjamin (1956), John B. Carroll (ed.), ed.,
Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of
Benjamin Lee Whorf, MIT Press
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