English Language and Linguistics, University of the West of England.
Foreign Language Department, Osaka Gakuin University.
Cogn Sci. 2020 Dec;44(12):e12923. doi: 10.1111/cogs.12923.
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.
本文介绍了两项实验，旨在研究母语中是否存在强制性数标记对说话者从照片中回忆数字信息能力的影响。在实验 1 中，母语为英语和日语的成年人观看了一系列 110 张照片，然后回答与照片相关的问题。我们发现，当正确答案为“2”（而不是“1”）时，英语参与者回答关于数字信息回忆的问题的准确率明显高于日语参与者。在实验 2 中，英语和日语成年人参与了与实验 1 相同的任务，此外还探索了导致实验 1 结果的原因。实验 2 的结果与实验 1 的结果一致，但也表明结果不能归因于两组之间猜测模式的差异或测试情境中使用的语言结构类型。本研究表明，母语会影响说话者从场景中回忆数字信息的能力，从而为沃尔夫假说提供了证据。
