Task 9 - Common Ground PDF

Task 9 - Common Ground Language Comprehension - Eysenck chapter Introduction Syntax - the set of rules of word order that must be followed to create well-formed sentences. Grammar - the set of rules that govern the structure of a language (e.g. syntax & infl...

Task 9 - Common Ground Language Comprehension - Eysenck chapter Introduction Syntax - the set of rules of word order that must be followed to create well-formed sentences. Grammar - the set of rules that govern the structure of a language (e.g. syntax & inflections). Inflections - grammatical changes to nouns or verbs (e.g. adding -s to make plural nouns or adding -ed to indicate past tense verbs). Parsing: overview Parsing - analyzing the syntactical or grammatical structure of sentences. Parsing allows readers and listeners to say who did what to whom (or how, when, where). Morpheme - the smallest meaningful units of a linguistic expression (e.g. the word incoming can be broken down into 3 morphemes - in, come, -ing). Morphology - the study of words and how they are formed from morphemes. Many languages are more inflectional than English and thus have a richer morphology. Most parsing research has focused only on the English language. Syntax and grammar Productivity - we can produce an infinite number of grammatically correct sentences in any language. Many sentences are ambiguous. Globally ambiguous sentences - when the entire sentence has 2 interpretations (e.g. Kids make nutritious snacks) Locally ambiguous sentences - when various interpretations are possible during parsing. When the whole sentence is heard, the local ambiguity is cleared up (e.g. The old train … left the station) Ambiguity appears because language users try to save effort (it would be very demanding to produce only unambiguous sentences ) and the context provides useful information, that does not need to be repeated in language. Parsing is typically a quick and automatic process, and this speed makes it challenging for researchers to directly observe and study the specific cognitive processes involved. By presenting ambiguous sentences to participants and assessing the difficulties they face in understanding and disambiguatin g these sentences, researchers can gain a better understanding of the processes underlying parsing. Pragmatics Pragmatics - the study of the ways language is used and understood in the real world including a consideration of its intended meaning; in general, the impact of contextual factors on meaning. There are 2 levels of analysis of sentence comprehension: the analysis of the syntactical structure of a sentence and the ana lysis of its meaning. The intended meaning often differs from the literal meaning (e.g. when saying The weather's really great when it has been raining for days). Pragmatics = meaning - semantics. The context in which a sentence is spoken can also influence its meaning. A dictionary fails to capture the pragmatic aspect of meaning. Figurative language - language that is not intended to be taken literally (e.g. metaphors, irony and idioms). Figurative language processing involves the same brain network as literal processing. Several areas close to & in the inferior frontal gyrus are more activated during figurative than literal processing. Applying rTMS to disrupt these areas impairs the processing of idioms involving maximal semantic conflict between literal & idiomatic meanings. It is hypothesized that these areas provide cognitive control to resolve semantic conflicts. Individuals with autism find social communication hard and have weak central coherence (the ability to integrate information from different sources). They also have severe problems understanding the intended meanings of figurative language. Children with Asperger's syndrome often develop language normally but have impaired pragmatic language comprehension, especia lly when they need to take into account the context and/or other people's feelings and thought. Figurative language: metaphors Metaphor comprehension can be relatively demanding. Study: readers low in working memory capacity required more processing time to comprehend metaphors. Traditional standard pragmatic model - 3 sequential stages are involved in processing metaphorical and other figurative statements: The literal meaning is accessed. The reader/listener decides whether the literal meaning makes sense in the current context. If the literal meaning is inadequate, there is a search for a suitable non-literal meaning. Metaphor interference effect - the finding that it takes longer to judge whether metaphorical sentences are literally true or false than control sentences. This effect shows that the traditional model is simplified, because the model predicts that when people are asked to say if s entences are literally true or false, they should respond rapidly, without accessing the figurative meanings. This effect suggests that metaphorical and literal meanings are generated automatically and simultaneously during comprehensi on. Complex Cognition Page 1  This effect suggests that metaphorical and literal meanings are generated automatically and simultaneously during comprehensi on. Comprehension of metaphors can be perceptually grounded. Study: metaphorical sentences that referred to body parts (e.g. He had to foot the bill, versus He had to pay the bill) were associated with more activity in brain areas that were responsive to images of body parts. Kintsch's predication model of metaphor comprehension - metaphor comprehension involves 2 components: Latent semantic analysis component - represents word meanings based on their relations with other words. Construction-integration component - uses information from the first component to construct interpretations of statements. The statement Lawyers are sharks has an argument (lawyers) and a predicate or assertion (sharks). This component selects predicate features relevant to the argument (e.g., vicious; aggressive) and inhibits irrelevant predicate features (e.g., have fins; swim). Study: the metaphor My lawyer is a shark is harder to understand when literal properties of sharks (e.g. can swim) irrelevant to its metaphorical meaning have recently been activated (by a contextual sentence emphasizing the literal meaning of shark - Sharks can swim). The predication model states that understanding metaphors involves inhibiting the semantic properties of the predicate irrelevant to the argument. Study: Participants saw metaphors (e.g., “The prisoners are sardines”) and literal sentences (e.g., “The fish are sardines”). After that, participants decided whether a metaphor-relevant property (e.g., canned) or metaphor-irrelevant property (e.g., salty) was true of the last word in the sentence (e.g., sardines). Participants verified object properties more slowly following a metaphorical sentence compared to a literal one => participants inhibited metaphor-irrelevant information while reading metaphorical sentences. Individuals having superior inhibitory processes exhibit the best metaphor comprehension. Kintsch speculated that metaphor comprehension is facilitated when both nouns in a metaphor (e.g., “Lawyers are sharks”) have strong semantic relationships to many other words (are similar in meaning to many other words) because that facilitates the task of establishing connections between them. However, the opposite was found in a later study. It was speculated then that the activation of numerous semantically similar words might make it harder to find shared meanings between the 2 nouns. The initial processing of metaphors involves a non-directional process, which finds overlapping meanings between the argument and the predicate. It is followed by a directional process. Therefore, forward metaphors (e.g. Some giraffes are skyscrapers) and reversed metaphors (e.g. Some skyscrapers are giraffes) should have the same comprehensibility when participants respond rapidly. If they have sufficient time for processing, comprehensibility should be high for forward than reverse metaphors. This has been confirmed by research (see figure). Kintsch's model is applicable to "A is B" metaphors (e.g. Lawyers are sharks) than to correlation metaphors (e.g. My research is off to a great start). Inhibitory processes are often less used with familiar metaphors (compared to novel ones), presumably because processing demands were much less. Common ground Common ground - shared knowledge and beliefs possessed by a speaker and a listener; its use facilitates communication. Listeners expect speakers to refer mostly to information and knowledge that falls in the common ground and often experience d ifficulties if that is not the case. A major goal of conversation is to extend the common ground between those involved. Egocentric heuristic - a strategy used by listeners in which they interpret what they hear based on their own knowledge rather than knowledge shared with the speaker. Using the common ground can be very effortful for speakers, which is why they generally resort to this heuristic. Use of the egocentric heuristic will often cause listeners to misunderstand the speaker’s message. Listeners sometimes follow use of the egocentric heuristic with an effortful process of trying to adopt the speaker's perspec tive. While several studies have found that listeners often use the egocentric heuristic and ignore the common ground, many other studies have found the opposite. The findings from studies are most consistent with the theory that listeners make simultaneous use of an egocentric perspective and common ground. When participants have to do a second cognitively demanding task, in addition to a task in which they can choose from the egocentric perspective & common ground, they use the egocentric heuristic more often (because they lack the processing resources to make use of the common ground). Study: Chinese-English bilinguals are primed to focus on the Chinese on American culture. Only 5% of those focusing on the Chinese culture use the egocentric heuristic, compared to 45% focusing on the American cultu re. Consistent with the assumption that Western cultures are more individualistic and self -focused than Eastern cultures. Complex Cognition Page 2  Consistent with the assumption that Western cultures are more individualistic and self -focused than Eastern cultures. Friends who are expected to share more common ground than strangers should rely less on the egocentric heuristic. However, the opposite is true, because friends overestimate how well they communicate with each other. Limitations of common ground research include limited ecological validity and a focus on very specific aspects of common ground. Discourse processing: inferences Discourse - language that is at least several sentences long; includes written text & connected speech. Single sentences are more likely to be ambiguous because they lack the context provided by previous sentences within discours e. Discourse processing typically requires inference drawing for full comprehension (e.g. when we hear the sentences Mary heard the ice-cream van coming. She remembered the pocket money. She rushed into the house. We draw many inferences (e.g. Mary wants to buy some ice cream, which costs money. She has pocket money in the house and has a limited time to get it, etc.) that are not explicitly stated. Logical inferences - inferences that depend only on the meanings of words (e.g. inferring that a widow is a female). Bridging/backward inferences - inferences drawn to increase coherence between the current and preceding parts of a text Elaborative inferences - inferences based on our knowledge of the world that involve adding details to text/speech. Predictive/forward inferences - a type of elaborative inferences - expectations concerning what will be mentioned next in the text/speech. The differences between bridging & elaborative inferences are not always clear-cut. For example, when reading the sentences Jill had very fair skin. She forgot to put sunscreen on. She had sunburn on Monday. After reading sentence 2, readers can draw the elaborative inference that Jill had sunburn. After reading sentence 3, readers can draw the bridging inferences that the sunburn has resulted from forgetting to put on su nscreen. Theoretical perspectives Readers/listeners typically draw logical and bridging inferences, which are typically required for full comprehension. However, the number and nature of elaborative inferences (including predictive inferences) remains controversial. Bransford's constructionist model - readers construct a fairly complete mental model (an internal representation of situation/event having the same structure as that situation/event) of the situation described in a text. Numerous elaborative inferences are drawn during reading even when not essential for comprehension. Minimalist hypothesis - assumes far fewer inferences are drawn than does the constructionist approach. It is based on the following assumptions: Inferences are automatic or strategic (goal-directed). Some automatic inferences establish local coherence (two or three sentences making sense on their own or in combination with easily available general knowledge). These inferences involve parts of the text in working memory at the same time. Other automatic inferences rely on information readily available because it is explicitly stated in the text. Strategic inferences are formed in pursuit of the reader’s goals; they sometimes serve to produce local coherence. Most elaborative inferences are made at recall rather than during reading. Memory based theories (e.g. minimalist hypothesis) rely on a passive and dumb memory activation mechanism. Explanation-based theories (e.g. constructionist approach) assume more interaction between basic memory mechanisms and reader goals & strategies. Van den Broek & Helder's theoretical framework: combines elements of previous theories and assumes 2 types of processes: There are passive automatic processes outside the reader's conscious control which always occur (resembling the assumed processes within the minimalist hypothesis). There are also effortful reader-initiated processes. The extent of such processes depends on the reader's standards of coherence (the criteria that a reader has for what constitutes adequate comprehension and coherence in a particular reading situation) (resembling the processes in the constructionist approach). When the passive processes alone yield adequate comprehension by attaining the reader’s standards of coherence, then no further processing is necessary. However, if passive processes alone lead to comprehension Below the reader’s standards, then reader-initiated, coherence- building processes are likely. Bridging inferences: anaphors Anaphor - a word or phrase that refers back to a previous word or phrase (e.g. a pronoun may refer back to a given individual mentioned earlier). Anaphor resolution is a very common form of bridging inference. Gender information can be helpful for drawing appropriate anaphoric inferences (e.g. Juliet sold John her lawn mower, and then she sold him her garden hose is easier to resolve than Fred sold John his lawn mower, and then he sold him his garden hose.) Complex Cognition Page 3 hose is easier to resolve than Fred sold John his lawn mower, and then he sold him his garden hose.) Having pronounced in the expected order can also help anaphor resolution. For example, Vlad sold Dirk his broomstick because he hated it is easier to resolve than Vlad sold Dirk his broomstick because he needed it. Working memory capacity also helps anaphor resolution. Study: participants are presented with sentences containing pronouns whose referents are ambiguous. Readers high in WM capaci ty are more likely to take account of both possible referents. When pronouns have only one possible referent, it has often been assumed that readers automatically identify the correct one. However, most findings are consistent with the assumption that anaphor resolution involves multiple constraints (e.g. gender, meaning). Operating interactively in parallel. Bridging inferences: more complex inferences Causal inferences, which involve working out the causal relationship between the current sentence and a previous one, are a common form of bridging inference. For example, when one hears the sentences: Ken drove to London yesterday. The car kept overheating. One can link these sentences based on the assumption that Ken drove to London in a car that kept overheating. 2-stage model of forming bridging inferences: Bonding - a low-level process involving the automatic activation of words from the preceding sentence. Resolution - ensures the overall interpretation is consistent with the context. Resolution is influenced by context, but bonding is not. Study: participants are given the goal of reading sentences of comprehension or to anticipate what might happen next. Participants in the latter condition drew more predictive inferences. Even when participants in the former condition drew pre dictive inferences, they did so more slowly than those in the anticipation condition. Consistent with the minimalist hypothesis & van den Broek and Helder's framework (readers' goals influence which inferences a re drawn). Study: WM capacity predicts (beyond IQ) the count of drawn elaborative causal inferences. Individuals high in anxiety draw threatening inferences in ambiguous situations more often. For example, when presented with a sentence such as With hardly any visibility, the plane quickly approached the dangerous mountain and, at the same time, the passengers began to shout in panic. The plane... and then presented with the word 'crashed' or 'swerved', they are more likely to name the word 'crashed' faster than low-anxious ones. Overall evaluation There is an increasing consensus on several issues: Readers/listeners typically form bridging inferences (including causal inferences) to make coherent sense of text or speech. Readers/listeners rapidly use contextual information and their world knowledge to draw inferences. Many inferences (including causal and predictive ones) are often drawn relatively “automatically”. However, the extent to whi ch this happens depends on various factors (e.g., working memory capacity; engagement with the text; reading speed). Readers’ goals influence whether predictive inferences are drawn. Readers with superior reading skills (including those having high working memory capacity) draw more inferences than other re aders. The major theories contribute to our understanding of inference drawing: The minimalist hypothesis is probably correct when the reader is very quickly reading the text, when the text lacks global coherence, and when the reader has very little background knowledge. The constructionist theory is on the mark when the reader is attempting to comprehend the text for enjoyment or mastery at a more leisurely pace. Thus, inference drawing is very flexible. This flexibility is captured by van den Broek and Helder’s theoretical framework allowing for both passive and reader-initiated processes. Linguistic relativity - Heine chapter Whorfian (linguistic relativity) hypothesis - language determines how we think => we are unable to think on a topic if we don't have the relevant words available. The strong version of this hypothesis has been almost universally rejected. A weaker version is that the language we speak af fects how we think. The reasoning for the weak hypothesis is not that language allows people to think about certain ideas, but rather that it obliges them to think about certain ideas (e.g. in German inanimate objects are assigned a gender, which forces Germans to think about gender in wa ys that English- speaking people are not). Linguistic relativity and color perception Different languages parse the continuous spectrum of colors in dramatically different discrete ways. However, the differences are not arbitrary and there are quite consistent patterns across languages. All known languages have a minimum of two color terms. The one identified language (Dani) with only 2 terms has words that roughly correspond to “black” (which includes all dark -hued colors) and “white” (which includes all lighter hues). All of the languages with 3 color terms have words that roughly correspond to black, white, and red (which included some oran ges, yellows, browns, pinks, and purples, with red being the focus of the category). Languages that have 4 color terms have words that approximate the colors of black, white, red, and either green or yellow. Languages with 5 color terms have the same words, including words for both green and yellow. Complex Cognition Page 4  Languages with 5 color terms have the same words, including words for both green and yellow. Languages with 6 color terms add blue to the list Languages with 7 terms include a word for brown. Languages with 8 color terms add either purple, pink, gray, or orange to the list. Furthermore, the focal point of each of these color categories (e.g., the most prototypical green in an array of different sh ades of green) is largely similar across language groups. English speakers use the word blue to refer to the color of the sky, blueberries, and the South Pacific Ocean. The Japanese word for blue is ao, and this word is also used to refer to the color of the sky, blueberries, and the South Pacific Ocean, but the same term is used to refer to the color of a lawn, a freshly shaven scalp, and what English speakers would call a green traffic si gnal. This begs the question if Japanese and English speakers perceive the same color when they look at the same patch of lawn. Study: the Dani remembered colors in color perception tasks in similar ways to Americans, despite having such divergent color categories. Furthermore, the Dani could learn and recall new words that were associated with colors that corresponded with the foci of th e eight basic chromatic categories of English more easily than they could learn words for colors that occupied intermediate points along th e color spectrum. Therefore, this suggests that color perception and memory are independent from the color words used in a language => this is evidence against the Whorfian hypothesis. The design of the above study was criticized and replication was not done, the Whorfian hypothesis being abandoned for 30 years. However, more research was done after that to address these criticisms. Later research failed to replicate all results and found considerable cultural differences in the ways people learned and rem embered colors. Study: Berinmo & Himba speakers (whose languages have 5 basic color items, whose boundaries differ somewhat from that of the words form the other language) were shown 3 different colored chips and asked which of 2 chips (Chip 1 or Chip 2) was more similar to the target chip. The target chip was equally distant from Chips 1 and 2 in terms of hue. However, Chips 1 and 2 fell into 2 different perceptual categories. 3 sets of trials chips were included based on the color categories of English, Berinmo & Himba. In the figure, Dumbu-Burou boundary refers to a color boundary in the Himba language, while Nol-Wor refers to a color category boundary in the Berinmo language. People show evidence that their perception of the different colors is influenced by the color categories used in their respective languages => Language can affect color perception. Linguistic relativity and odor perception Study: native Jahai speakers (who have a much larger lexicon of olfaction words than English) are compared with American English speakers in their ability to name both a set of odors (e.g. cinnamon, gasoline, onion) and a set of colors (e.g. red, blue, black). The participants were presented with the smells and color chips and were asked to freely describe them. The researchers looked to see how much agreement there was between the participants. Americans reached much more agreement amongst themselves when describing colors than when describing odors. There was almost no agreement among American participants in how they described odors. In contrast, the Jahai they reached about the same amount of agreement when describing colors as when they were describing odors. Linguistic relativity and perceptions of agency When describing an accident in English, people commonly use an agentive description (e.g. he broke the machine instead of the machine was broken). People who hear sentences of the former type tend to view the doer as more at fault, and would assign a larger fine. When English speakers wish to avoid blame for an event, they are more likely to describe it in non -agentive ways. Study: English and Spanish speakers watched videos that showed people involved in some actions (e.g. breaking a vase) either by acting intentionally (in which agency is typically reported both in English and in Spanish) or unintentionally (in which agency is more likely to be reported in English than in Spanish). Later the participants were shown pictures of different people and are asked who had broken the vase. The English and Spanish speakers were equally accurate when identifying the targets who had acted intentionally. However, the English speakers were more accurate than the Spanish speakers in recalling who had broken the vase unintentional ly => by not being obliged to encode for agency in unintentional behaviors, Spanish speakers attended less to who had actually broken the vase a nd were less likely to recall that fact. Linguistic relativity and spatial perception English & Dutch speakers often identify locations based on their position relative to the speaker, using terms such as left, right, front, and back. In contrast, speakers of Guugu Yimithirr (an aboriginal group in Australia) identify space in absolute terms, using terms suc h as east, west, north & south. They lack relativistic direction terms. Complex Cognition Page 5  Study: Dutch & Guugu Ymithirr participants are shown a row of figures of a cow, a pig, and a person on a table in one room, in which participants were facing north. Then they were asked to go to a different room that had a similar table containing the same figures, except now the table was against the south wall, so participants were facing south. The participants were asked to re-create the same scene they had witnessed in the other room. Most of the Dutch respondents tended to re-create the scenes based on their own position relative to the animals (cow left of pig, left of the person). In contrast, most of the Guugu Ymithirr speakers re-created the scenes in absolute terms (cow west of pig, west of the person). The Whorfian explanation is that because their spatial language is based solely on the cardinal directions, they conceive of the arrangement of their world only with respect to these directions. Dutch speakers, in contrast, elaborate more on directions relative to their physical selves, so it is less useful to attend to the cardinal directions in most situations. The Guugu Ymithirr tendency to conceive of directions in absolute terms is more common among subsistence populations throughout the world and is also more similar to the ways that chimpanzees understand directions. It appears that the tendency to attend to directions relative to one’s own egocentric position is a relatively recent development, and one that is peculiar to some industrialized cultures. People's understanding of time tends to be grounded in their understanding of space. English speakers see time as passing from left to right => they would arrange the pictures below from left to right, regardle ss of which direction they are facing. Study: aborigines from Pormpuraaw (who also tend to use only absolute spatial markers for directions), arrange the pictures b elow from east to west, because they perceive time as passing from east to west, tracking the sun's movement across the sky. Numerical cognition Despite the many studies that provide evidence against the strong Whorfian argument, there is one line of research that may provide support for it. Many cultures have relatively impoverished number systems (e.g. the Piraha, a tribe from the Lowland Amazon region of Brazil, has a number system that contains only the numbers 1, 2 and many). Study: Piraha participants are shown a number of nuts in a can and allowed to inspect them for some time. The experimenter then removes the can from view of the participants and would remove 1 nut at a time. After each nut was removed, the participants were asked if there were any remaining nuts in the can. The participants did well on this task when there were initially up to 2 nuts in the can. However, their performance steadily dropped in trials that contained increasing numbers of nuts. Study: Piraha participants are shown an array of objects (e.g. 5 batteries). Then they are given some nuts and asked to place out the same number of nuts as there were batteries. Similar to the nuts in the can task, participants could do this task well with small numbers. However, their performance deteriorated considerably as the numbers got larger. In all the tasks conducted, the errors that the Piraha made increased with the magnitude of the numbers they were asked to es timate => although they do not have concepts for specific numbers greater than 2, they do seem able to have rough quantity estimation skills (e. g. they know that 12 > 8 even though they have a hard time distinguishing between 9 and 8). Cultures that have few number terms also seem to map numbers onto space differently. In industrialized societies people learn about numbers as linear (difference between 17 and 18 is the same as that between 1 and 2). However, without the cultural input, people do not have an innate linear sense of numbers by default, but rather a logarithmi c sense. The evidence comes from research of kindergarten-age American children, who haven't mastered numeric concepts yet, and with other cultures that have few number words. On language processing shaping decision-making - Costa Article Decision-making machines with talking heads Humans are decision-making machines with talking heads => we make decisions based on information that is communicated linguistically. Complex Cognition Page 6 Humans are decision-making machines with talking heads => we make decisions based on information that is communicated linguistically. In principle, if we understand the necessary information for making a decision (e.g. whether or not to undergo a surgery), the language in which it is presented should not affect our decision. However, this is not the case. Using a foreign language modifies decision-making tendencies Foreign language effect - using a foreign language affects the contribution of system 1 (intuitive) and system 2 (deliberate) processes to our decisions. Foreign-language processing leads to a reduction of loss and risk aversion. In a foreign-language context, people are less affected by the way choices are framed (in terms of gains or losses) and they are more will ing to take risks for positive expected outcomes. Foreign-language use also affects people's judgments of risks and benefits - reducing the perception of risk and increasing the perception of benefit. Foreign-language processing reduces illusory correlations. Hot-hand fallacy - the tendency to expect a positive outcome after a series of prior positive outcomes, even when the events are independent. Using a foreign language reduces this fallacy effect. Foreign-language can also reduce illusions of causality (whereby people perceive a causal link between 2 successive independent event s). Foreign-language processing promotes more utilitarian choices than native-language processing. When presented with the footbridge dilemma, in which saving the life of five people involves actively sacrificing the life of another person, people are more willing to make this sacrifice if the dilemma is presented in a foreign language. People tend to judge the wrongness of moral transgressions (actions that break moral/social norms but have no tangible conseq uences) less harshly when the transgressions are presented in a foreign language. On the origin of the foreign-language effect The foreign-language effect has been explained with dual-process theories of decision-making. Reading, writing, listening, and speaking are more costly and largely less fluent in a foreign language than in a native language Some authors have suggested that processing difficulty is used as a signal to engage in more thoughtful and deliberative proc essing, which reduces the effects of intuition. Foreign- language processing recruits brain areas related to control processes to a greater extent than native -language processing—the inferior prefrontal and dorso-anterior cingulate cortices. Messages processed in a foreign language usually elicit a milder emotional response compared to those processed in a native language. Foreign-language use lowers emotional reactivity, as shown e.g. by reduced electrodermal responses to swear words and childhood repri mand. Reading emotionally charged passages in a foreign language elicits less activation in brain areas related to emotional proces sing in the amygdala. Therefore, the foreign-language effect could result from a reduction in the emotional reactivity elicited by the decision -making scenario, which would in turn reduce the impact of affective states on people's decisions, allowing for more deliberative processing. Foreign-language use may lead to an increase in psychological distance—it may aid in taking a more objective perspective of the situation and construing the options in a more global/abstract way. Psychological distance and foreign-language use can affect people’s decisions in a similar manner. Foreign-language use has been shown to lead to a detachment effect, such that people are able to discuss certain topics that they would otherwise find too aversive. The way psychological distance affects people's judgments is still debated. These 3 explanations are not mutually exclusive, but complementary and related to each other. Thinking more or feeling less? Explaining the foreign-language effect on moral judgment - Hayakawa Article Article summary here. The relation between language, culture, and thought - Imai Article Trends in cognitive psychology Non-linguistic representations are more similar across different language communities than linguistic representations. Non-linguistic sorting (when participants sort objects/actions into groups based on similarity) is more similar across language c ommunities than naming (where participants categorize objects/actions by labels). Some have claimed that the Whorfian effect appears because language is implicitly used to perform experimental tasks, outside of the participants' awareness. Assuming such a position, the majority of the results showing cross-linguistic differences are not evidence for the Whorfian hypothesis. However, others have claimed that language is highly integrated into domain-general cognitive functions and automatically modulates ongoing cognitive processes. Lexical categories are accessed automatically in the brain in tasks in which no language is invocated. Therefore, recent research mostly focuses on when/how language modulates perception, cognitive functions and conceptual representations rather than trying answer if the Whorfian hypothesis holds. Complex Cognition Page 7 trying answer if the Whorfian hypothesis holds. Research on color perception: Categorical perception of color is eliminated when the use of language is inhibited by verbal interference => language is use d when we naturally perceive colors. Categorical perception is often pronounced in the right visual field, when information is being processed in the language -dominant left hemisphere. Even when participants are engaging in a purely non-linguistic color discrimination task, the language regions of the brain are still automatically activated to access lexical categories. Study: English-Spanish bilinguals and English-monolinguals judge whether a target picture belongs to the same category as 2 previously shown picture. Although the task was carried out only in English, a negative ERP modulation was found in the bilinguals when the grammatical gender class of the target picture was different from that of the first two in Spanish. This suggests that the grammatical gender information of Spanish is automatically recruited in the bilinguals when processing English. Research on when/how Whorfian effects arise during the course of development has shown that language and concepts bootstrap one another and that acquisition of language may make children more or less sensitive to particular conceptual distinctions: Study: at 14 months of age, English-reared and Japanese-reared infants are equally sensitive to whether someone is walking across a bounded space (e.g., a railroad track) or a flat, unbounded space (e.g., a grassy field) - instances that are denoted by 2 separate verbs in Japanese (wataru and tooru, respectively) but not in English. By 19 months of age, however, the two groups diverge, and only Japanese-reared infants maintain sensitivity to the different types of grounds Studies with deaf children who have received only impoverished linguistic input by their hearing parents showed that these ch ildren have a disadvantage in memorizing or understanding spatial locations and exact number representations. It has been suggested that bilinguals’ experience with juggling 2 languages may result in cognitive advantages in domains suc h as executive function and theory of mind. Researchers in cognitive psychology generally have not considered the role of culture when exploring the relation between thought and language. Many researchers in this field focus on culture as general, inherited knowledge from previous generations but do not fully ad dress the diversity of culture-specific values and belief systems that can impact how individuals acquire knowledge. Trends in cultural psychology Some researchers in cultural psychology treat culture as macro-level thinking patterns (e.g. attitudes, values, beliefs), and language is used as a cue which can prime certain attitudes, social judgments, or causal attributions. Study: presenting subjects with an emotionally charged word (e.g., hostility) influenced their impressions of a hypothetical person. Others consider culturally unique belief systems and narratives as a higher level of linguistic phenomena, which people internalize through repeated interactions with other members of a given cultural/linguistic community. Here language is treated as a set of narratives that reflect culture-specific value & belief systems. Living in cultures where people share a holistic epistemology, East Asians are thought to be exposed to a bundle of discourse s and practices in which sensitivity to background information is highly valued. In contrast, European and American cultures value an analytic thinking style and hence objects are singled out from the background in everyday discourse. Research of influence of culture on low-level cognitive processes has shown differences in attention, categorization, causal attribution, and inferences of other people's attitude. Cultural neuroscience research has shown cross-cultural differences in ERP-patterns, brain structure, and fMRI activations. While cultural psychology researchers tend not to consider the influence of language separately from that of culture, there is indication that habitual exposure to particular linguistic narratives reflecting cultural values may shape thought and so culture-specific behaviors may be enhanced with culture- specific narratives. Study: East Asians showed attention patterns consistent with their cultural values (high sensitivity to background informatio n) when asked to describe animation vignettes verbally as compared to when they observed them. Interaction between culture and language Availability of the superordinate category labels overarching human kinds and non-human animals (i.e., the term ‘animal’ in English) prompt children’s inductive generalizations from human to non-human animals and subsequent understanding of the broad category of ‘living things’, as compared to when the language lacks such superordinate terms. Study: English-Mandarin bilinguals switch their preferred mode of conceptual relations (preferring thematic relations (e.g. purposes, uses, roles) to taxonomic kinds) according to the language used in the particular experiment session. The interaction between culture and language also affects how young children learn verbs. Study: it was expected that Chinese and Japanese children might learn new verbs better than English children because they foc us on actions more. However, Chinese children paid more attention to objects and connected the new word to the object, even when it was clearly a verb in the sentence. This preference for linking words to objects might be due to a universal tendency in children to do so, and it's amplified by the way Chinese doesn't distinguish between nouns and verbs in its language. This suggests that language can have a strong influence on its own, even more than cultural biases. Conclusion The studies examining the effect of culture and language simultaneously indicate that language and culture-specific cognitive biases/mode of thinking can play an important role on cognitive processes and knowledge representation independent of each other. However, it is far more likely that culture and language work conjointly in various ways. Complex Cognition Page 8 However, it is far more likely that culture and language work conjointly in various ways. Future research must not only consider the relation between language and thought or culture and thought, but also should atte mpt to gain deeper understanding of the relation between the two. Complex Cognition Page 9