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Psyc 1306 Language and Thought

Psyc 1306 Language and Thought. Spatial Frames of Reference 2. Frames of Reference (how one talks about the directions and locations of objects in space…). Ground or Reference Object. Figure. “Where is the umbrella?” GEOCENTRIC The umbrella is south of the bed. OBJECT-BASED

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Psyc 1306 Language and Thought

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  1. Psyc 1306 Language and Thought Spatial Frames of Reference 2

  2. Frames of Reference(how one talks about the directions and locations of objects in space…) Ground or Reference Object Figure • “Where is the umbrella?” • GEOCENTRIC • The umbrella is south of the bed. • OBJECT-BASED • The umbrella is at the head of the bed. • EGOCENTRIC (special OBJECT-BASED FRAME) • The umbrella is to the left of the bed.

  3. Crosslinguistic Variations (Levinson 2003; Brown & Levinson, 1993; Pederson et al., 1998; Majid et al., 2004, etc.) • Linguistic Descriptions *picture from D. Haun *picture from D. Haun ?

  4. Crosslinguistic Variations (Levinson 2003; Brown & Levinson, 1993; Pederson et al., 1998; Majid et al., 2004, etc.) • English • Egocentric preference • “left” and “right”

  5. Tenejapa, Chiapas Mexico Crosslinguistic Variations (Brown & Levinson, 1993; Pederson et al., 1998; Majid et al., 2004, etc.) • Tseltal Mayan (spoken in Tenejapa, Mexico)

  6. Crosslinguistic Variations (Brown & Levinson, 1993; Pederson et al., 1998; Majid et al., 2004, etc.) • Tseltal Mayan (spoken in Tenejapa, Mexico) • Geocentric preference • alan “downhill” (N), aj’kol “uphill” (S), jejch “crosshill” (EW) • Lexical Gap: No projective left or right! uphill crosshill downhill

  7. Lexical Gap Leads to Conceptual Gap Tenejapans [i.e., Tseltal speakers] show an interesting tendency to confuse left-right inversions or mirror-images, even when visually presented simultaneously, which seems related to their absence of ‘left’ and ‘right’ terms. (Levinson, 1996 in Gumperz & Levinson: 182)

  8. I am here Language Preference Leads to Cognitive Habits and Expertise Tenejapans maintain a constant sense of absolute orientation, presumably by running a continuous background computation… with respect to abstract bearings, integrating multiple internal and external cues to achieve this. Levinson, Kita, Haun, & Rasch (2002) p. 173

  9. Claims of Language Influence on Thought Egocentric Geocentric • Linguistic Determinism • Language-specific categories determine non-linguistic representations. • Tseltal speakers will have extreme difficulty with tasks requiring egocentric representations. • Moderate Linguistic Relativity • Language-specific categories result in habitual tendencies and expertise in thought. • Tseltal speakers prefer (and are experts at) geocentric representations and find tasks requiring egocentric representations difficult. • English speakers show the reverse pattern Tseltal Speakers Tseltal Speakers English Speakers

  10. 180º N GEOCENTRIC EGOCENTRIC Tseltal speakers English speakers Evidence for Linguistic Relativity Blue dot “north” of red dot. Blue dot “left” of red dot. (Brown & Levinson, 1993; Pederson et al. 1998; Majid et al. 2004, etc…)

  11. 180º N Nature of Language Driven Preference • What is the scope of the language effect? • Scope is wide: Influence is deep. • Preference reflects habit and expertise for reasoning in that Frame of Reference. (e.g., Levinson, 2003; Majid et al., 2004)

  12. 180º N Nature of Language Driven Preference • What is the scope of the language effect? • Scope is narrow: Influence is shallow. • Preference reflects a language on language effect. (Gleitman & Papafragou, 2005; Li & Gleitman, 2002)

  13. 180º N Nature of Language Driven Preference • What is the scope of the language effect? • Scope is narrow: Influence is shallow. • Make it/Find the same? • The instruction is open-ended. The participant has to interpret the experimenter’s intended meaning. • How one’s linguistic community customarily speaks about or responds to inquiries about locations and directions might come to influence what appropriately counts as the “same” spatial array.

  14. 180º N Nature of Language Driven Preference • What is the scope of the language effect? • If language effect is narrow/shallow, restricted to open-ended tasks, then language effect should likely disappear when the tasks are no longer open-ended. • If language effect is wide/deep, language effect should likely persist even when the tasks are no longer open-ended.

  15. 180º 180º N N New Methodolgy • Compare speakers on unambiguous tasks for which the solutions must match the Egocentric or the Geocentric perspective. Egocentric Condition Table 2 Table 1 Geocentric Condition

  16. Geocentric Egocentric Geocentric Egocentric Egocentric Geocentric L Tseltal Tseltal Speakers Speakers Tseltal Speakers J L Easy Easy L Easy Easy Hard Hard Hard Hard L J English Speakers L English Speakers L English Speakers Hard Hard Hard Hard Easy Easy Easy Easy New Methodolgy • Compare speakers on unambiguous tasks for which the solutions must match the Egocentric or the Geocentric perspective. • Egocentric alone. • Is Egocentricextremely hard for Tseltal speakers? • Egocentric vs. Geocentric. • Is Geocentriceasier than Egocentric for Tseltal speakers? • Tseltal vs. English Speakers.

  17. Unambiguous Chips Task Egocentric Condition Geocentric Condition

  18. Unambiguous Chips Task Egocentric Condition Geocentric Condition

  19. Unambiguous Chips Task Egocentric condition: Chips Card rotated 180 degrees to Table 2. Egocentric Condition Geocentric condition: Chips Card moved to Table 2 without rotation. Geocentric Condition

  20. Unambiguous Chips Task Egocentric condition: Chips Card rotated 180 degrees to Table 2. Egocentric Condition Geocentric condition: Chips Card moved to Table 2 without rotation. Geocentric Condition

  21. Unambiguous Chips Task • 26 Monolingual Tseltal Speakers • Between-Ss design • ½ Egocentric ,½ Geocentric • Select “same” card: • 8 Test trials (Table 2, after 180 Turn) • Varied/Counterbalanced UD-EW/LR-NS orientations (but n.s.)

  22. Egocentric Geocentric Unambiguous Chips Task Result 100 90 80 70 60 / % Trials Correct 50 40 30 20 10 0 (n=10) (n=9) (n=10) (n=8) (n=13) (n=13) English Speaking Children (6-7y.o.) English Speaking Adults Tseltal Speaking Adults

  23. Geocentric Geocentric Egocentric Egocentric Geocentric Geocentric Egocentric Egocentric Easy Easy Easy Easy J J Easy Easy Tseltal Tseltal Speakers Speakers J J Tseltal Tseltal Speakers Speakers Easy Easy J J J J English Speakers English Speakers Easy Easy Easy Easy Easy Easy Easy Easy English Speakers English Speakers J J J J J J J J Unambiguous Chips Task Summary • Egocentric: Rules out strong version that questions the availability of Egocentric FoR in Tseltal speakers. • Egocentric = Geocentric:Tseltal speakers could keep track of the relationship between the card dots not only with respect to the environment, but with respect to themselves in memory. • Tseltal vs. English: Both groups have available the two frames of reference.

  24. Unambiguous Maze Task Table 2 Table 1 • Experimenter (E) rolls out a path. • Covers the maze to mask path after-image. • …. (Step 3. movement of Ss and maze to table 2)… • 4. Participant asked to roll out the same path.

  25. Unambiguous Maze Task Step 3 As in Experiment 1 Egocentric condition: Maze rotated 180 degrees to Table 2. Table 2 Table 1 Geocentric condition: Maze moved to Table 2 without rotation.

  26. 1-leg 2-legs 3-legs Unambiguous Maze Task • Same Ss as Exp. 1 in same condition. • 10 Test Trials • Two 1-leg paths • Four 2-leg paths • Four 3-leg paths

  27. Unambiguous Maze Task Results 100 90 80 70 60 Egocentric % Trials Correct 50 Geocentric 40 30 20 10 0 1-Leg 2-Legs 3-Legs ANOVA: Condition (p < .001), Legs (p < .001), Condition x Leg (p < .001)

  28. Unambiguous Maze Task Summary • Egocentric • Egocentric better than Geocentric for Tseltal speakers • Geocentric: Poor performance is inconsistent with language making geocentric FoR more available in Tseltal speakers’ thought. • Egocentric better than Geocentric: The perspective and position from which a person takes in information about a visual scene can often be advantaged in memory. Towards sunrise, then downhill.

  29. Geocentric Egocentric Geocentric Geocentric Egocentric Egocentric J Hard Easy Easy Tseltal Speakers Hard Hard L Easy Easy Tseltal Speakers Tseltal Speakers L L L L Harder English Speakers English Speakers English Speakers J J Easier Unambiguous Maze TaskComparison between Groups • Tseltal Speakers vs. English Speakers • Is this true?

  30. English Speaking Adults Tseltal Speaking Adults 100 100 90 90 80 80 70 70 60 E (n=13) 60 E (n=10) 50 50 G (n=13) % Trials Correct G (n=10) % Trials Correct 40 40 30 30 20 20 10 10 0 0 1-Leg 2-Legs 3-Legs 1-Leg 2-Legs 3-Legs English Speaking Children (6-7y.o.) 100 90 80 70 60 E (n=8) 50 G (n=9) % Trials Correct 40 30 20 10 0 1-Leg 2-Legs 3-Legs Unambiguous Maze Task Are Tseltal speakers better on Geocentric condition than English speakers?

  31. English Speaking Adults Tseltal Speaking Adults 100 100 90 90 80 80 70 70 60 E (n=13) 60 E (n=10) 50 50 G (n=13) % Trials Correct G (n=10) % Trials Correct 40 40 30 30 20 20 10 10 0 0 1-Leg 2-Legs 3-Legs 1-Leg 2-Legs 3-Legs English Speaking Children (6-7y.o.) 100 90 80 70 60 E (n=8) 50 G (n=9) % Trials Correct 40 30 20 10 0 1-Leg 2-Legs 3-Legs Unambiguous Maze Task Are Tseltal speakers worse on Egocentric condition than English speakers?

  32. Geocentric Egocentric Geocentric Egocentric Geocentric Geocentric Egocentric Egocentric Hard Hard Easy Easy Tseltal Tseltal Speakers Speakers Hard Hard Easy Easy Tseltal Tseltal Speakers Speakers L L J J L L J J Hard Hard Easy Easy English Speakers English Speakers English Speakers English Speakers Hard Hard Easy Easy L L J J L L J J Unambiguous Maze Task Summary • Egocentric • Egocentric better than Geocentric for Tseltal speakers • Tseltal Speakers vs. English Speakers • Contrary to previous claims of linguistic relativity, Tseltal and English speakers are more alike than different in how they reason about spatial relationships.

  33. Language Usage Language Elicitation Task Participants of Experiments 1 & 2 “Banti stojol” – where is it heading?

  34. Language Usage Language Elicitation Task 104 response = (4 responses / participant) x 26 participants Response Breakdown 28 sun (towards sunset: ta smalib k´aal) 22 landscape (towards uphill: ta ajk´ol) 12 Spanish cardinal terms (towards the north: ta norte/sur/este/oeste) 22 Neighboring parajes or towns (towards Canyada, ta Canyada) 16 local man-made landmarks (towards the street: ta carretera) 4 non-geocentric reference inside testing room (towards you: ta atojol ). 1 Ss NO Left/Right or Front/Back Use

  35. Circle Task Egocentric condition: Display rotated 180 degrees by Experimenter at Table 2. 180º Table 1 Table 2 Geocentric condition: Display moved by Experimenter to Table 2 without rotation. 180º Table 2 Table 1 • The experimenter hides the coin in one of the yellow cups at Table 1. • The experimenter moves the display to Table 2. • Then participants turns 180° to walk to Table 2. • Participant points to the cup.

  36. 16 New Monolingual Tseltal Speakers 4 Practice Trials (1 table only) 16 Test Trials (2 tables) Within-Ss Design 8 Egocentric , 8 Geocentric Trials Blocked and counterbalanced. Circle Task

  37. 77% 60% Circle Task Results 95% 100 90 * 80 * 70 60 % Correct chance 50 * Different from chance: p < .05 40 30 20 10 0 egocentric geocentric practice 2 (Perspective: Geo, Ego) x 2 (Block Order: Geo first, Ego first) ANOVA 1 Effect found: Perspective (F(1, 14) = 16.92, p = .001)

  38. Circle Task Summary • Egocentric • Egocentric better than Geocentric for Tseltal speakers • Replicates MAZE task • The perspective from which a person takes in information about a visual scene can often be advantaged in memory.

  39. Current FindingsContrary to Claims in the Literature • Levinson (2003) • “Absolute [i.e. geocentric] descriptions come without viewpoints. In a way, to think ‘absolutely’ one had better throw away visual memory: after all coffee‐pot to left of cup becomes coffee‐pot to right of cup from the other side of table – but coffee‐pot to north of cup remains constant regardless of viewpoint.” (p. 274). • “Tzeltal speakers can rebuild an assemblage of arbitrary complexity under rotation” (p. 289) • “Tzeltal speakers have an impressive powers of mental rotation… because they construct at once a full 3D model of a scene, rather than hanging onto just one viewpoint” (p. 346)

  40. I am here Swivel Chair Task We called the bluff of our principal informant, who claimed to know day and night, awake or asleep, mountain or plain, where batz'il alan 'true downhill' always lay (a direction he indicated with precision recurrently). We blindfolded him, and spun him around over 20 times in a darkened house. Still blindfolded and dizzy, he pointed in the agreed direction! Brown & Levinson (1993), p. 52

  41. Egocentric Geocentric Swivel Chair Task • Participant (P) sits in chair. • Experimenter (E) hides a coin in 1 of 2 boxes. • E blind-folds P. • E spins P. • E takes blind-fold off P. • P has to point to the box with the coin.

  42. Swivel Chair Task • 24 NEW Monolingual Tseltal speakers • Within-Subjects Design • 8 Trials per Condition (Geo. vs. Ego) • Blocked, counterbalanced • 4 Ending positions (90, 180, 270, 360 from initial) • 2 trials per ending position • Furnished room (Table, Window, etc.)

  43. 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 Paired t(23)=2.82, p = .01. Egocentric 92.3% > Geocentric 80.0% Swivel Chair Results % Correct egocentric geocentric

  44. 100% 90% 96% 80% 94% 92% 90% 94% 70% 81% 81% 60% % Correct Chance 50% 60% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% 90° 180° 270° 360° 90° 180° 270° 360° Egocentric Geocentric Swivel Chair Results Results by Degree Effect of Condition, Degree, Condition x Degree.

  45. Swivel Chair Results • Egocentric • Egocentric better than Geocentric! • SURPRISING: No reason to expect poorer performance on Geocentric condition. • Tseltal speakers could have encoded: “The one downhill/The one next to the table” and answered correctly. • Better performance on the egocentric condition aligns with Maze and Circle task though. • Tseltal speakers spatial reasoning is viewpoint dependent!

  46. Questioning Methodology Open-ended Tasks (Find the “same”) Do previous studies really show one’s cognitive habit is aligned with the preference of one’s language community? Or do they show that knowledge of how our linguistic community typically communicates influences how one interprets ambiguous spatial task? Changed method to UNAMBIGUOUS task: Lead to DIFFERENT CONCLUSIONS! Recapitulation

  47. Summary of Datafrom Tseltal Speakers Task Egocentric Geocentric • Language • Chips • Maze • Circles • Swivel Chair Language Thought

  48. Which Claim is Supported by New Data? Egocentric Geocentric • Linguistic Determinism • Language-specific categories determine non-linguistic representations. • Moderate Linguistic Relativity • Language-specific categories result in habitual tendencies and expertise in thought. • Cognitive Universalism Tseltal Speakers Tseltal Speakers English Speakers Tseltal & English Speakers

  49. What about Haun et al (2006) PNAS? • Common phylogenetic inheritance of a preference of allocentric strategy • Such preference can be overwritten by cultural preference for egocentric strategy

  50. What about Haun et al (2006) PNAS? • Comment from a reviewer: The authors conclude "egocentric reasoning seems to be easier than geocentric reasoning". This is the Piagetian claim of course, but both my lab and the authors actually know better. We have shown that the default preference across all great apes and human infants is geocentric or at least allocentric (PNAS 103, 17568-17573). It is somewhat disingenuous then to pretend otherwise for the sake of the current argument - at least we would need some explanation here.

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