The Influence of Our Native language on Cognitive Representations of Colour, Spatial Relations and Time

Abstract

Language and other cognitive capabilities of the human brain have traditionally been seen as the hallmark of what it is to be human. Empiricist philosophers argue that our experiences determine our thoughts and what we become. On the other hand, Kant acknowledges the significance of our experiences, but claims that they are organised in terms of innate fundamental concepts (i.e., concepts that are present in humans regardless of their particular experiences and perceptions), which are related to our language capabilities. It is not surprising then that the relationship between language and thought has attracted significant attention in psychology. The interaction of language and thought has previously been explored bilaterally. However, in the current literature review we shall focus only on the influence of language on thought. The Whorfian HypothesisEarly experiments (Smith, Brown, Toman, & Goodman, 1947) demonstrate that cognition can operate independently of language capacity. However, many scholars argue that the way we speak influences the way we think, even if they disagree on the extent of that influence. At one extreme, the Whorfian hypothesis (Whorf, 1956) asserts that the language we speak determines the thoughts we can have (linguistic determinism). In relation to this, Green (2010) suggests two criteria that the evidence for linguistic determinism should meet:In order to support efficiently linguistic determinism, one would need to provide evidence that speakers of one language cannot think or entertain thoughts that come naturally to speakers of another language and also that those differences in thinking involve higher cognitive processes, which are demonstrably caused by language. (pp. 366-367) In the following section, we will review the relevant literature against the above criteria. Language and colour perceptionEarly studies investigated colour perception and naming as a means of supporting the Whorfian hypothesis. Brown and Lennenberg (1954) found a positive correlation between recognition of a given colour and its ' codability' (i.e., its categorisation under a concept that is represented with a word). However, the researchers acknowledged that these results did not qualify as support for a causal link between language and thought. Instead, it seems that the codability of a colour facilitates the recognition of that colour, rather than conclusively determining the colours that we can recognise. Hence, if we teach someone how to label given colour hues with (new) language terms, this could make the future recognition of those colours easier. In other words, the language vocabulary an individual holds, or the colour terms available in the language an individual speaks, does not seem to decisively constrain the recognition of unlabeled colour variations. If the acquisition of new terms can readily facilitate recognition or even memorisation of the newly named colours, it seems implausible to argue that the language we speak disables us from entertaining thoughts produced within a differen...

Correctional rehabilitation and human functioning: An embodied, embedded, and enactive approach

“…Furthermore, the way people use language has been found to have a profound influence over how they perceive and understand the world. The language people use influences a diverse range of cognitive and perceptual processes such as how they perceive colour (Sarantakis, 2014), or label and understand emotional experiences (Barrett, 2017). As such, any psychological explanation of a person should address how they exist in relation to their cultural environment.…”