5 ms·

Could you point me towards some linguists who think this idea is bogus? https://www.researchgate.net/publication/12165254_Language_space_and_the_development_of

by cwkoss 7y ago

Could you point me towards some linguists who think this idea is bogus? https://www.researchgate.net/publication/12165254_Language_space_and_the_development_of_cognitive_flexibility_in_humans_The_case_of_two_spatial_memory_tasks https://www.researchgate.net/publication/12165254_Language_s... This study found that a child's language production abilities predicts performance on a reorientation task: simply - young humans tend to perform like rats until they learn to use prepositional phrases.

kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
OP is referencing the Whorf hyopthesis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity
- godelski 7y ago
  I was under the impression that Linguistic Relativity (or Sapir-Whorf) as in "the structure of a language affects its speakers' world view or cognition." was well recognized. I would think programmers would be particularly fond of this idea, because I for one tend to go about problems differently when I write in different languages (also a technique I use when I'm stuck on a problem).
  - cwkoss 7y ago
    It seems self-evident to me that if you present humans with a set of novel stimuli, giving them a 'vocabulary' for the configuration of the stimuli would help them remember the configuration more durably. Ex. sets of 3 blocks of various colors are presented to subjects. Either the experimenter gives a 'control lecture' showing possible upcoming sets and they just list the colors, or they teach the subject a name for each of the possible sets - gibberish like 'flurback' and 'orshwalg'. Present a list of sets, spending the same amount of time 'discussing' each set with each set - either with or without using names. I would predict the 'names' group would significantly outperform in long-term memory formation of which sets were shown in which order.
    - godelski 7y ago
      Another good example I heard is with colors. Different languages have different words for colors, blue being a specifically unmentioned one in Greek. So if you're calling the sea "wine-red" and the sky white, it just makes sense that you would compare other similar colors with the limited set of categories you have. I mean it seems easy to simulate. You set up a classifier to classify colors but leave out blue. Sure, it is going to poorly predict blues and misclassify them as things like reds, whites, or greens, but isn't that what SW predicts?

by cwkoss 7y ago

kevin_thibedeau 7y ago

OP is referencing the Whorf hyopthesis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity

godelski 7y ago
I was under the impression that Linguistic Relativity (or Sapir-Whorf) as in "the structure of a language affects its speakers' world view or cognition." was well recognized. I would think programmers would be particularly fond of this idea, because I for one tend to go about problems differently when I write in different languages (also a technique I use when I'm stuck on a problem).
- cwkoss 7y ago
  It seems self-evident to me that if you present humans with a set of novel stimuli, giving them a 'vocabulary' for the configuration of the stimuli would help them remember the configuration more durably. Ex. sets of 3 blocks of various colors are presented to subjects. Either the experimenter gives a 'control lecture' showing possible upcoming sets and they just list the colors, or they teach the subject a name for each of the possible sets - gibberish like 'flurback' and 'orshwalg'. Present a list of sets, spending the same amount of time 'discussing' each set with each set - either with or without using names. I would predict the 'names' group would significantly outperform in long-term memory formation of which sets were shown in which order.
  - godelski 7y ago
    Another good example I heard is with colors. Different languages have different words for colors, blue being a specifically unmentioned one in Greek. So if you're calling the sea "wine-red" and the sky white, it just makes sense that you would compare other similar colors with the limited set of categories you have. I mean it seems easy to simulate. You set up a classifier to classify colors but leave out blue. Sure, it is going to poorly predict blues and misclassify them as things like reds, whites, or greens, but isn't that what SW predicts?