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The effect of language-specific characteristics on English and Japanese speakers' ability to recall number information

Kirjavainen, Minna; Kite, Yuriko; Piasecki, Anna E.

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Authors

Yuriko Kite

Anna Piasecki Anna.Piasecki@uwe.ac.uk
Director of Research and Enterprise



Abstract

The current paper presents two experiments investigating the effect of presence versus absence of compulsory number marking in a native language on a speaker’s ability to recall number information from photos. In Experiment 1, monolingual English and Japanese adults were shown a sequence of 110 photos after which they were asked questions about the photos. We found that the English participants showed a significantly higher accuracy rate for questions testing recall for number information when the correct answer was ‘2’ (instead of ‘1’) than Japanese participants. In experiment 2, English and Japanese adults engaged in the same task as in Experiment 1 with an addition that explored reasons for the results found in Experiment 1. The results of Experiment 2 were in line with the results of Experiment 1, but also suggested that the results could not be attributed to differences in guessing patterns between the two groups or the type of linguistic constructions used in the test situations. The current study suggests that native language affects speakers’ ability to recall number information from scenes and thus provides evidence for the Whorfian hypothesis.

Citation

Kirjavainen, M., Kite, Y., & Piasecki, A. E. (2020). The effect of language-specific characteristics on English and Japanese speakers' ability to recall number information. Cognitive Science, 44(12), Article e12923. https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12923

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Nov 5, 2020
Online Publication Date Dec 11, 2020
Publication Date Dec 11, 2020
Deposit Date Dec 7, 2020
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal Cognitive Science
Print ISSN 0364-0213
Electronic ISSN 1551-6709
Publisher Wiley
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 44
Issue 12
Article Number e12923
DOI https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12923
Keywords Whorfian hypothesis; Linguistic relativity; Number marking; Visual memory; Plurality; Recall; Japanese; English
Public URL https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/6919773
Publisher URL https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cogs.12923

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Copyright Statement
This is the peer reviewed version of the article which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12923. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions





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