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The Sound of Thickness: Prelinguistic Infants’ Associations of Space and
- Cooper (Eds.), Proceedings of the 34th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 306–311). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society
, 2012
"... People often talk about musical pitch in terms of spatial metaphors. In English, for instance, pitches can be high or low, whereas in other languages pitches are described as thick or thin. According to psychophysical studies, metaphors in language can also shape people’s nonlinguistic space-pitch r ..."
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People often talk about musical pitch in terms of spatial metaphors. In English, for instance, pitches can be high or low, whereas in other languages pitches are described as thick or thin. According to psychophysical studies, metaphors in language can also shape people’s nonlinguistic space-pitch representations. But does language establish mappings between space and pitch in the first place or does it modify preexisting associations? Here we tested 4-month-old Dutch infants ’ sensitivity to height-pitch and thickness-pitch mappings in two preferential looking tasks. Dutch infants looked significantly longer at cross-modally congruent stimuli in both experiments, indicating that infants are sensitive to space-pitch associations prior to language. This early presence of space-pitch mappings suggests that these associations do not originate from language. Rather, language may build upon pre-existing mappings and change them gradually via some form of competitive associative learning.
Experiential origins of the mental number line
- in Proceedings of the 36th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, eds
, 2014
"... Abstract People map numbers onto horizontal space, forming an implicit mental number line (MNL). The direction of the MNL, which varies across cultures, has often been attributed to the direction of reading and writing words. Yet, this proposal is neither clearly motivated nor well supported by exp ..."
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Abstract People map numbers onto horizontal space, forming an implicit mental number line (MNL). The direction of the MNL, which varies across cultures, has often been attributed to the direction of reading and writing words. Yet, this proposal is neither clearly motivated nor well supported by experimental data. Here we tested the hypothesis that fingercounting habits can determine the direction of the MNL. Americans were trained to count on their fingers from left to right or from right to left. After rightward counting, participants showed implicit associations of small numbers with left space and large numbers with right space, typical for Americans. After leftward counting, this space-number association was extinguished, overall, and was qualitatively reversed in a significant proportion of the individual participants. A few minutes of finger counting experience can redirect the MNL, supporting a causal role for finger counting in the acquisition and maintenance of culture-specific mental number lines.
The Thickness of Musical Pitch: Psychophysical evidence for the Whorfian hypothesis
"... Do the languages that people speak affect the way they think about musical pitch? Here we compared pitch representations in native speakers of Dutch and Farsi. Dutch speakers describe pitches as „high ‟ (hoog) and „low ‟ (laag), but Farsi speakers describe high-frequency pitches as „thin‟ (naazok) a ..."
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Do the languages that people speak affect the way they think about musical pitch? Here we compared pitch representations in native speakers of Dutch and Farsi. Dutch speakers describe pitches as „high ‟ (hoog) and „low ‟ (laag), but Farsi speakers describe high-frequency pitches as „thin‟ (naazok) and low-frequency pitches as „thick ‟ (koloft). Differences in language were reflected in differences in performance on two psychophysical pitch reproduction tasks. This was true even though the tasks used entirely nonlinguistic stimuli and responses. To test whether experience using language changes pitch representations, we trained native Dutch speakers to use Farsi-like metaphors, describing pitch relationships in terms of thickness. After training, Dutch speakers ‟ performance on a nonlinguistic psychophysical task resembled native Farsi speakers‟. People who use different space-pitch metaphors in language also think about pitch differently. Beyond correlation, language plays a causal role in shaping mental representations of musical pitch.
Association for Psychological Science
"... sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0956797614528521 pss.sagepub.com ..."
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sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0956797614528521 pss.sagepub.com
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"... 2 Do people think about time the way they talk about it? This chapter examines dissociations between temporal language and temporal thinking in speakers of English and of Darija, a dialect of Moroccan Arabic. In both languages, conventional metaphors suggest that the future is ahead of the speaker a ..."
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2 Do people think about time the way they talk about it? This chapter examines dissociations between temporal language and temporal thinking in speakers of English and of Darija, a dialect of Moroccan Arabic. In both languages, conventional metaphors suggest that the future is ahead of the speaker and the past is behind. Yet, English speakers typically conceptualize the future as rightward and the past as leftward – a spatial mapping that is not conventionalized in any known spoken language. Darija speakers typically conceptualize the past as ahead and the future a behind them – a spatial mapping that directly contradicts their verbal metaphors. Darija speakers’ “backward ” mapping of time does not appear to arise from any feature of their language, or from their physical experience with the natural world, but rather from their cultural bias to focus on the past (i.e., to value their ancestry and practice ancient traditions). Analyses of verbal space-time metaphors reveal that humans ’ temporal thinking depends, in part, on spatial mappings. Yet, essential features of these mappings, including their spatial orientation and direction, may be absent from language and can only be discovered using extra-linguistic methods. Beyond the influences of
Psychological Science 24(5) 613 –621 © The Author(s) 2013 Reprints and permission:
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Spatial congruity effects reveal metaphors, not markedness
, 2013
"... Spatial congruity effects have often been interpreted as evidence for metaphorical thinking, but an alternative markedness-based account challenges this view. In two experiments, we directly compared metaphor and markedness explanations for spatial congruity effects, using musical pitch as a testbed ..."
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Spatial congruity effects have often been interpreted as evidence for metaphorical thinking, but an alternative markedness-based account challenges this view. In two experiments, we directly compared metaphor and markedness explanations for spatial congruity effects, using musical pitch as a testbed. English speakers who talk about pitch in terms of spatial height were tested in speeded space-pitch compatibility tasks. To determine whether space-pitch congruency effects could be elicited by any marked spatial continuum, participants were asked to classify high- and low-frequency pitches as 'high ' and 'low ' or as 'front ' and 'back' (both pairs of terms constitute cases of marked continuums). We found congruency effects in high/low conditions but not in front/back conditions, indicating that markedness is not sufficient to account for congruity effects (Experiment 1). A second experiment showed that congruency effects were specific to spatial words that cued a vertical schema (tall/short), and that congruity effects were not an artifact of polysemy (e.g., 'high' referring both to space and pitch). Together, these results suggest that congruency effects reveal metaphorical uses of spatial schemas, not markedness effects.
THE INFLUENCE OF MOVEMENT ON THE DIRECTIONALITY OF SPACE-TIME REPRESENTATION MAPPINGS By
, 2009
"... This Thesis- Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by the The Graduate School at DigiNole Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of DigiNole Commons. For more information, please contact ..."
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This Thesis- Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by the The Graduate School at DigiNole Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of DigiNole Commons. For more information, please contact
