Bender Andrea, Beller Sieghard, Klauer Karl Christoph
Department of Psychology, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany.
Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2011 Sep;64(9):1821-35. doi: 10.1080/17470218.2011.582128. Epub 2011 Jul 8.
The "principle of linguistic relativity" holds that, by way of grammatical categorization, language affects the conceptual representations of its speakers. Formal gender systems are a case in point, albeit a particularly controversial one: Previous studies obtained broadly diverging data, thus giving rise to conflicting conclusions. To a large extent, this incoherence is related to task differences and methodological problems. Here, a priming design is presented that avoids previous problems, as it prevents participants from employing gender information in a strategic manner. Four experiments with German native speakers show priming effects of the prime's grammatical gender on animate and nonanimate targets, an effect for the prime's biological gender on animate targets, but no effect for the prime's biological gender on nonanimate targets, and thus speak against an effect of language on thought for German gender.
“语言相对论原则”认为，通过语法分类，语言会影响其使用者的概念表征。形式性别系统就是一个典型例子，尽管这是一个极具争议的例子：先前的研究获得了大相径庭的数据，从而得出了相互矛盾的结论。在很大程度上，这种不一致与任务差异和方法问题有关。在此，我们提出一种启动设计，它避免了先前的问题，因为它能防止参与者策略性地使用性别信息。四项针对以德语为母语者的实验表明，启动词的语法性别对有生命和无生命目标有启动效应，启动词的生理性别对有生命目标有影响，但对无生命目标没有影响，因此反驳了语言对德语性别思维有影响的观点。
