Rights statement: This is the peer reviewed version of the following article:Athanasopoulos, P. and Albright, D. (2016), A Perceptual Learning Approach to the Whorfian Hypothesis: Supervised Classification of Motion. Language Learning, 66: 666–689. doi:10.1111/lang.12180 which has been published in final form at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/lang.12180/abstract This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance With Wiley Terms and Conditions for self-archiving.
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Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - A perceptual learning approach to the Whorfian hypothesis
T2 - supervised classification of motion
AU - Athanasopoulos, Panos
AU - Albright, Daniel
N1 - This is the peer reviewed version of the following article:Athanasopoulos, P. and Albright, D. (2016), A Perceptual Learning Approach to the Whorfian Hypothesis: Supervised Classification of Motion. Language Learning, 66: 666–689. doi:10.1111/lang.12180 which has been published in final form at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/lang.12180/abstract This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance With Wiley Terms and Conditions for self-archiving.
PY - 2016/9
Y1 - 2016/9
N2 - Recent research on the relationship between grammatical aspect and motion event cognition has shown that speakers of nonaspect languages (e.g., German, Swedish) attend to event endpoints more than speakers of aspect languages (e.g., English, Spanish). In this study, we took a perceptual learning approach to the Whorfian hypothesis, training native English speakers to categorize events either in an English-like way (same-language bias) or in a Swedish-like way (other-language bias), with and without verbal interference in English. Results showed that successful learning occurred in both language conditions. However, verbal interference disrupted learning only in the condition where the perceptual dimension to be learned was also salient in the participant's native language. This revealed selective language influence depending on the associative or dissociative relationship between the linguistic features occurring in the observer's native language and the perceptual features of the stimuli presented to them.
AB - Recent research on the relationship between grammatical aspect and motion event cognition has shown that speakers of nonaspect languages (e.g., German, Swedish) attend to event endpoints more than speakers of aspect languages (e.g., English, Spanish). In this study, we took a perceptual learning approach to the Whorfian hypothesis, training native English speakers to categorize events either in an English-like way (same-language bias) or in a Swedish-like way (other-language bias), with and without verbal interference in English. Results showed that successful learning occurred in both language conditions. However, verbal interference disrupted learning only in the condition where the perceptual dimension to be learned was also salient in the participant's native language. This revealed selective language influence depending on the associative or dissociative relationship between the linguistic features occurring in the observer's native language and the perceptual features of the stimuli presented to them.
KW - motion events
KW - supervised classification
KW - Whorf
KW - linguistic relativity
U2 - 10.1111/lang.12180
DO - 10.1111/lang.12180
M3 - Journal article
VL - 66
SP - 666
EP - 689
JO - Language Learning
JF - Language Learning
SN - 0023-8333
IS - 3
ER -