Statistics and AssociationsPsychology 1306: Language and Thought
Presentation by: Evan Stephanie Favermann
Review of Yoshida & Smith (2003, 2005) and Lupyan, Rakison & McClelland (2007)
Purpose of Experimentation and Discussion• To look at the different ways various languages mark
individuals (specifically we look at Japanese and English)
• To look at children’s expectations about lexical categories
• To evaluate the proposal:“[T]he language one learns influences - perturbs slightly but
measurably - the boundaries between the psychological categories of animal, object, and substance,” (Yoshida & Smith, 2003).
Ontological Partitioning
• “The partition of things into animals, objects and substances is sometimes considered an ontological partition,” (Yoshida & Smith, 2003).
• Specification of categorical concept• Three different kinds of existence• Distinct psychological forms (which serve as a
foundation for human category learning)
Animates Objects Substances
Individuation Continuum (Lucy, 1992)
• Individuation: occurs when an entity is conceptualized as bounded and discrete
• Animates lie at one end and substances at the other end of a continuous spectrum
• The likelihood that a particular entity is conceptualized as individual varies systematically across the continuum from animates to substances
Animates Objects Substances
More Individualized Less Individualized
Individuation in English
• In English, individuation is frequently demonstrated by the count/mass distinction:
• Count Nouns: nouns that can take the plural (e.g. dogs, cups) discrete entities, bounded, thus conceptualized as
individuals• Mass Nouns: nouns that are not pluralized (e.g. milk), instead
take continuous quantifiers (e.g. some, much) continuous entities, unbounded, thus conceptualized as
masses
• Examples:• ACCEPTABLE: I am putting the car (object) in the
garage• AWKWARD: I am putting much car in the garage
• AWKWARD: I am putting a gas (substance) in my car• PREFERRED: I am putting some gas in my car
Individuation in English
• However, sometimes nouns may take both count and mass forms
• Examples:• Can you pass me a water? (object containing substance
implied)• Do you want some muffin? (part of a whole object
implied)
Individuation in English
Individuation in English
• Generally, English treats animates and complex objects as individuals, while substances are treated as masses
• The likelihood of treating an object as an individual drops markedly between objects and substances in English
Animates Objects SubstancesMassesIndividuals
English Individuation Boundary
Individuation in Japanese
• Japanese lexical and syntactic devices relevant to individuation are different from those in English:
• Japanese nouns that refer to multiple entities are not necessarily pluralized (e.g. the same expression can mean ‘there was a dog’ and ‘there were many dogs)
• A particular plural suffix -tachi is never used with inanimate nouns (and is optional with animate nouns)
• There are unique quantifiers for animates, but those used for objects and substances form an overlapping set
• Japanese also has separate ‘exists/is located’ verbs for animates and inanimates (iru and aru respectively)
KEY POINT: The Japanese language privileges animates as individuals
Individuation in Japanese
• The likelihood of treating an object as an individual drops markedly between animates and objects in Japanese
Animates Objects SubstancesMassesIndividuals
Japanese Individuation Boundary
The Boundary Shift Hypothesis (Yoshida & Smith, 2003)
The Boundary Shift Hypothesis: “The likelihood function relating things in the world to the conceptual categories of object and substance is shifted slightly in Japanese relative to English.”
Novel Noun Generalization Task (Soja, 1992)Purpose: To study children’s expectations about
ontological distinctionsThe Test:
• Experimenters present children with entity and give it a novel name (e.g. this is the mel)
• The experimenter then asks the child to identify which of new test stimuli presented is called by the same name (e.g. show me the mel)
Children’s generalizations provide insights into expectations about how nouns map to categories
Novel Noun Generalization Task
• Result: • The solidity of the substance is the dominant force on
children’s extension of novel names.• English-speaking children conceptualized both the
complex and simple solids as discrete objects• Japanese-speaking children conceptualized only
complex solid objects as individualized things• These results support the Boundary Shift Hypothesis
This is the mel Show me the mel
Novel Noun Generation Task
Japanese
English
Assimilation at the Boundary• The individuation boundary concept has important
implications for ambiguous kinds near the boundary• Proposal (Yoshida & Smith, 2003):
• Solid substances are conceptualized as objects by English speakers because they fall near the individuation boundary
• Correlations between perceptual properties (cues) and linguistic devices relevant to individuation enhance perceptual properties characteristic of individualized entities
• Thus, entities near the boundary that have ambiguous perceptual cues will be assimilated to the more individualized kind
• Is this true with ambiguity at Japanese boundary between animates and inanimates?
Experiment 1: Animates and Inanimates in Japanese (Yoshida & Smith, 2003)
• Experimental Question: Are objects that are ambiguous with respect to animacy assimilated toward the individuated end of the continuum?
• Motivation: (Jones & Smith, 2002) Adults judged animal categories to be well organized by similarities in shape and texture, whereas they judged artifact categories to be well organized by shape alone.
• If novel names are extended based on shape and texture, it can be assumed the kind was judged as an animate. If the name is extended based on shape alone, it is assumed the kind was judged as an artifact.
Experiment 1
Prediction:• Japanese - Individualized if judged similar on both
texture and shape
Experiment 1
• Method:• 20 two and three-year-old monolingual Japanese-
speaking participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions (were the verb means ‘exists/is located’):• Iru condition - animate privileged condition• Aru condition - inanimate condition
• Boundary ambiguous exemplars (at the animate/artifact boundary) were named using either iru or aru according to the condition to which the child was assigned
• Training:• Participants were presented with objects that either were
identical to the exemplar or different from it on all properties (shape, texture, and color). They were asked whether the new object had the same name as the first. Feedback was given in the training trials.
Experiment 1• Test:
• The experimental trials were identical to the training trials with the exception that no feedback was provided
• Each exemplar was named with a unique name• Participants were presented with test objects that matched the
exemplar on one, two, or all three of the properties.
Two examples of exemplars:
• Test Framing:
Presentation QuestionIru (animate) Koko-ni____-ga iru-yo Koko-ni____-ga iru-kana?
Aru (artifact) Kok-ni____-ga aru-yo Koko-ni____-ga aru-kana?
Experiment 1• Results:
• Conservativism with naming in Iru condition.• Participants in the Aru condition generalized the name to more test objects.• Children overall were more likely to generalize the name to new instances that
matched the exemplar on multiple properties than on just one property
Experiment 1• Discussion:
• Overall, performance in the Iru condition fits what is expected if children interpret the named exemplar as an animate thing and if they generalize names for animate things conservatively (by judging similarity in both texture and shape).
• Similarly, performance in the Aru condition fits what is expected if the named object is viewed as an artifact (inanimate) and names for artifacts are generalized more broadly by shape alone.
• Thus, linguistic cues influence whether an object is conceptualized as animate or artifact when perceptual cues are ambiguous
• Linguistic cues (iru/aru) alter the way Japanese-speaking children categorize novel objects
• The differing impact of iru and aru likely depends on the ambiguity of perceptual cues. In experiments with less ambiguous objects, linguistic cues have little influence.
Experiment 2: Individualization Across Languages (Yoshida & Smith, 2003)
• Experimental Question: Does a history of using linguistic cues influence conceptualization of ambiguous stimuli? Or is the explicit presence of linguistic cues required for influencing conceptualization as seen in Experiment 1?
• Motivation: Using the Boundary Shift Hypothesis, if the default is to individualize ambiguous forms at the boundary, then interpretation of animate-like forms should be more acutely animate (more narrowly defined) for Japanese-speaking participants than for English-speaking ones.
Experiment 2 Japanese
English
Prediction:• Japanese - individualized if judged similar on both
texture and shape• English - Individualized if only judged similar on shape
alone
Experiment 2
• Method:• 10 two and three-year-old monolingual English-speaking
participants and 10 two and three-year-old monolingual Japanese-speaking participants participated in an experiment identical to that of Experiment 1 with the exception of the sentence frames in which the novel names were presented• Frames were animate/artifact neutral
• Framing:
• Note: novel names given to exemplars were altered for English-speakers to sound natural in English (e.g. mobito/mobit, keppuru/kipple, tema/teema)
Presentation QuestionJapanese Kore-wa____da-yo Kore-wa____-kana?
English This is a ______ Is this a _______?
• Results:
• Main effect of language.• English-speaking children generalized exemplars’ names more broadly to more test objects than
did Japanese-speaking participants• Main effect of Multiple-versus Single-property matches (both groups overgeneralized the name
more to test objects that matched the exemplar in multiple properties than to test objects that matched the exemplar in just one)
Experiment 2
Experiment 2• Discussion:
• Japanese-speaking children generalized the novel names in the same way that would be expected with animates
• English-speaking children generalized novel names to all objects that matched in shape (both when the object matched in other properties as well and when it did not) in the same way that would be expected with artifacts
• Thus, Japanese-speakers formed a narrower category based on multiple similarities, while English-speakers formed a broader category based on shape.
• The results of Experiments 1 & 2 suggest that the individuation boundary in a language exerts a force on children’s conceptualization of ambiguous types.
• As predicted by the Boundary Shift Hypothesis, ambiguous kinds appear to be pulled toward the more individuated form.
Experiment 3: Role of Linguistic Cues in the Learning of Perceptual Cues (Yoshida & Smith, 2005)Experimental Question: How does the presence of correlated
linguistic cues to category structure influence learning about perceptual cues?
Motivation: Research with adults shows that the learned connection between a and b is stronger if acquired in the context of c than if acquired without that redundant correlation
Experiment 3
• Method:• 36 two-year-old Japanese participants were randomly
assigned to one of four conditions:• Presence of linguistic cues during training, presence of correlated linguistic
cues during testing• Presence of linguistic cues during training, absence of linguistic cues during
testing• Absence of linguistic cues during training, presence of correlated linguistic
cues during testing• Absence of linguistic cues during training, absence of linguistic cues during
testing
• Children were taught novel names for solids in shape-based categories and for non-solids in material-based categories
- Shape match
- Material match
Experiment 3• Training:
• Children were taught four categories through presentations of two exemplars for each category• Solid, shape match• Solid, material match• Nonsolid, shape match• Solid, material match
• During each training session, the experimenter named the instances with a novel word and repeated it at least 20 times
• For children in the training condition with ‘arbitrary’ linguistic cues, either hitotsu no (for solid exemplars) or sukoshi no (for nonsolid exemplars) was used• Note: These terms are syntactically relevant,
but likely unfamiliar to two-year-old Japanese speakers
Experiment 3• Training Frames:
Linguistic cues, Hitotsu no and sukoshi no, designed to reinforce perceptual cues
• Each child participated in 10 training sessions over 4 weeks. The order of training pairs was randomly determined at each session for each child.
Experiment 3• Test:
• On each trial, the participant was shown a novel entity, told a novel name, and then asked to pick from three alternatives another entity with the same name
• Hypothesis:• Participants with linguistic cues would
generalize the name for a novel solid thing on the basis of shape, whereas they would generalize the name for a novel nonsolid thing on the basis of material
• Control:• Without training, two-year-old Japanese-
speaking children overgeneralize the shape bias for solids to nonsolids. Furthermore, without training, linguistic cues do not differentially cue attention to shape and material
Experiment 3• Results:
• Responses were scored correct if the children generated names for solids on the basis of shape and for nonsolids on the basis of material
• Overall, children who were trained with the correlated linguistic cues outperformed those who were not trained, both when cues were present at the test and when they were not (both sign. at 5% level)
• Children in all conditions extended names for solids on the basis of shape• Performance of participants in nonsolid conditions depended on the training
condition (linguistic cues improved performance on nonsolid trials significantly)
Experiment 3• Discussion:
• Participants seemed to learn a whole category from hearing a single thing named• This is done via exploitation of cues to category structure (e.g. that
solidity predicts shape-based categories)• Results document a strong role for language in learning
(Linguistic bootstrapping)• The experiment shows that by teaching associations
between words and perceptual properties, one will change not only what is known about the words, but also what is known about the correlations among the perceptual properties.
• If language serves as a bootstrap to category learning, then different languages provide different bootstraps• “Languages selectively add redundancies to the regularities in the
world, and those redundancies strengthen learning about the regularities with which they are correlated (even when linguistic cues are removed)”
Key Take Away from Yoshida & Smith (2003, 2005)• Associations among perceptual cues, category structure, and linguistic cues
available to learners of Japanese
Key Take Away
• Associations among perceptual cues, category structure, and linguistic cues available to learners of English
Key Take Away
• Associations exist among perceptual cues, category structure, and linguistic cues in every language
• Correlations between perceptual cues and category structure constrain ontological categories for speakers of all languages and thus create universals
• Differences between English and Japanese linguistic cues can influence differences in name generalizations (which, in the absence of language should otherwise be universal)
• Thus, language plays a role in thinking about ontological partions (supports Whorf!)
Experiment 4: Role of Redundant Labels in Learning Novel Categories (Lupyan, Rakison, & McClelland, 2007)
• Experiment to assess whether presence of labels affected category formation
• “Subjects learned to categorize ‘aliens’ as those to be approached or those ot be avoided. After accuracy feedback on each response was provided, a nonsense label was either presented or not. Providing nonsense category labels facilitated category learning even though the labels were redundant.”
• A follow-up study found that learning a nonverbal association did not facilitate categorization.
• The findings show that linguistic labels make category distinctions more concrete and are thus in support of the Whorfian Hypothesis
Experiment 4
Results
Categories were nonsense terms ‘Leebish’ and ‘Grecious’
Type I Type II
Discussion
