Dr Minna Kirjavainen-Morgan Minna.Kirjavainen-Morgan@uwe.ac.uk
Associate Professor of English Language and Linguistics
The effect of language-specific characteristics on English and Japanese speakers' ability to recall number information
Kirjavainen, Minna; Kite, Yuriko; Piasecki, Anna E.
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.
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 | Dec 9, 2020 |
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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The effect of language-specific characteristics on English and Japanese speakers' ability to recall number information
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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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