Zettersten Martin, Lupyan Gary
Psychology Department, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1202 W Johnson Street, Madison, WI 53706, USA.
Psychology Department, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1202 W Johnson Street, Madison, WI 53706, USA.
Cognition. 2020 Mar;196:104135. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2019.104135. Epub 2019 Dec 9.
What are the cognitive consequences of having a name for something? Having a word for a feature makes it easier to communicate about a set of exemplars belonging to the same category (e.g., "the red things"). But might it also make it easier to learn the category itself? Here, we provide evidence that the ease of learning category distinctions based on simple visual features is predicted from the ease of naming those features. Across seven experiments, participants learned categories composed of colors or shapes that were either easy or more difficult to name in English. Holding the category structure constant, when the underlying features of the category were easy to name, participants were faster and more accurate in learning the novel category. These results suggest that compact verbal labels may facilitate hypothesis formation during learning: it is easier to pose the hypothesis "it is about redness" than "it is about that pinkish-purplish color". Our results have consequences for understanding how developmental and cross-linguistic differences in a language's vocabulary affect category learning and conceptual development.
为某事物命名会带来哪些认知方面的影响呢？为一个特征赋予一个词语会使关于属于同一类别的一组示例（例如，“红色的东西”）的交流变得更加容易。但这是否也会使学习该类别本身变得更加容易呢？在此，我们提供证据表明，基于简单视觉特征学习类别差异的难易程度可由为这些特征命名的难易程度预测得出。在七项实验中，参与者学习由颜色或形状组成的类别，这些颜色或形状在英语中要么易于命名，要么较难命名。在类别结构保持不变的情况下，当类别的潜在特征易于命名时，参与者学习新类别时速度更快且更准确。这些结果表明，简洁的语言标签可能会在学习过程中促进假设的形成：提出“它与红色有关”的假设比提出“它与那种粉紫色有关”的假设更容易。我们的研究结果对于理解一种语言词汇中的发展性差异和跨语言差异如何影响类别学习和概念发展具有重要意义。
