"Ser" Helps Spanish Speakers Identify "Real" Properties

Abstract

We examined the effects of language on developing knowledge of the distinction between "real" and "apparent" properties of bjects by comparing the perfomance of English- and Spanish-spiaking monolingual and bilingual children on an appearance-reality task in 3 experiments. In Experiment 1, monolingul - s nf Spanish-speaking preschoolers participated in an a peprance-reality task in which Spanish speakers heard forms of the Spanish verb ser in place of the English verb "is" in the reality questions and forms of the Spanish verb estar in palce of "is" in the appearance questions. Spanish speakers performed reliably better than English speakers on the question about the real properties of less familiar objecrd. In Experiment 2, English-Spanish bilingual children participated in the same tadk used in Experiment 1. They answered half of the questions in English and half in Spanish. Bilinguals identified the real properties of objects reliably better in Spanish than in English, indicating that language can affect the ability to identify real properties. In Experiment 3, we examined the role of language in the ability of monolingual English-speaking 3-year-olds to identify real and apparent properties. These children answerd different type of appearance and reality questions, using the same objects from Experiments 1 and Half of the children answered standard appearance-reality questions; the other children answered elaborated versions of the English questions. Children in both conditions performed equivalently, suggesting that English-speaking children are not easily influenced by language in these tasks. Apparently, the advantage that the Spanish copual, ser, gives speakers of Spanish is important and unique because it cannot easily be instantiated in English.

The Role of Language in the Development of False Belief Understanding: A Training Study

“…When the findings of correlational studies and training studies converge, this is the strongest possible evidence (short of randomly assigning children to different life circumstances) that these are the factors involved (MacCall, 1977). An interesting and important question for future research would be whether different languages and parenting styles would lead to individual differences in socialcognitive development (e.g., see Sera, Bales, & Del Castillo Pintado, 1997;Vinden, 2001).…”

Language and Ontological Knowledge: The Contrast between Objects and Events Made by Spanish and English Speakers

“…In this sense, our work is reminiscent of the classic literature on the relation between color names and the psychological organization of the color spectrum showing how languages reflect important psychological reference points. Recent cross-linguistic studies focus on potential differences between speakers of different languages in other cognitive tasks (e.g., Sera, Reittinger, & Castillo, 1991;Lucy, 1992;Sera, Berge, & Castillo, 1994;Martinez & Shatz, 1996;Levinson, 1996;Sera, Bales, & Castillo, 1997). Across languages with more than two color terms, the terms cluster around certain wavelengths, and those wavelengths enjoy the psychological advantage of prototypes (Rosch, 1973).…”

Making discourse-dependent decisions: The case of the copulas ser and estar in Spanish

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