School of Cultures, Languages and Linguistics, Faculty of Arts, University of Auckland, CLL Building, 18 Symonds Street, Auckland 1010, New Zealand.
University of British Columbia, Canada.
Cognition. 2021 Jan;206:104485. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2020.104485. Epub 2020 Oct 20.
Recent research shows that speakers of most languages find smells difficult to abstract and name. Can verbal labels enhance the human capacity to learn smell categories? Few studies have examined how verbal labeling might affect non-visual cognitive processes, and thus far very little is known about word-assisted odor category learning. To address these gaps, we tested whether different types of training change learning gains in odor categorization. After four intensive days of training to categorize odors that were co-presented with arbitrary verbal labels, people who learned odor categories with odor-label pairs that were more consistent were significantly more accurate than people with the same perceptual experience but who had odor-label pairs that were less consistent. Both groups' accuracy scores improved, but the learning curves differed. The context of consistent linguistic cuing supported an increase in correct responses from the third day of training. However, inconsistent linguistic cuing delayed the start of approximating to target odor categorization until after the fourth day. These results show that associations formed between odors and novel verbal labels facilitate the formation of odor categories. We interpret this as showing a causal link between language and olfactory perceptual processing in supporting categorization.
最近的研究表明，大多数语言的使用者发现很难对气味进行抽象和命名。言语标签能增强人类学习气味类别的能力吗？很少有研究检验言语标签如何影响非视觉认知过程，因此，目前我们对单词辅助气味类别学习知之甚少。为了解决这些差距，我们测试了不同类型的训练是否会改变气味分类的学习收益。在四天密集的训练中，参与者需要对同时呈现的气味进行分类，并辅以任意的言语标签，与那些使用一致性更强的气味-标签对进行学习的人相比，使用一致性更差的气味-标签对进行学习的人在气味分类方面的准确性明显更高。两组的准确率都有所提高，但学习曲线不同。一致性语言提示的语境支持从第三天的训练开始增加正确反应。然而，不一致的语言提示会延迟接近目标气味分类的开始，直到第四天之后。这些结果表明，在新的言语标签和气味之间形成的联想促进了气味类别的形成。我们将其解释为语言和嗅觉感知处理之间的因果关系，支持分类。
