Department of Philosophy, University of Cincinnati, USA.
Department of Philosophy, University of Cincinnati, USA.
Cognition. 2021 Jun;211:104622. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104622. Epub 2021 Feb 15.
In recent years, language has been shown to play a number of important cognitive roles over and above the communication of thoughts. One hypothesis gaining support is that language facilitates thought about abstract categories, such as democracy or prediction. To test this proposal, a novel set of semantic memory task trials, designed for assessing abstract thought non-linguistically, were normed for levels of abstractness. The trials were rated as more or less abstract to the degree that answering them required the participant to abstract away from both perceptual features and common setting associations corresponding to the target image. The normed materials were then used with a population of people with aphasia to assess the relationship of abstract thought to language. While the language-impaired group with aphasia showed lower overall accuracy and longer response times than controls in general, of special note is that their response times were significantly longer as a function of a trial's degree of abstractness. Further, the aphasia group's response times in reporting their degree of confidence (a separate, metacognitive measure) were negatively correlated with their language production abilities, with lower language scores predicting longer metacognitive response times. These results provide some support for the hypothesis that language is an important aid to abstract thought and to metacognition about abstract thought.
近年来，语言在思维交流之外，被证明具有许多重要的认知作用。一个越来越得到支持的假设是，语言促进了对抽象概念的思考，例如民主或预测。为了验证这一观点，我们设计了一套新颖的语义记忆任务测试，旨在通过非语言方式评估抽象思维，这些测试根据抽象程度进行了规范。这些测试被评定为更抽象或更不抽象，程度取决于回答它们是否需要参与者抽象出目标图像的感知特征和常见背景关联。然后，我们使用失语症患者群体来评估抽象思维与语言的关系。尽管患有失语症的语言障碍组的总体准确性和反应时间通常都低于对照组，但值得注意的是，他们的反应时间随着测试的抽象程度而显著延长。此外，失语症组在报告其信心程度（一个单独的元认知测量）时的反应时间与他们的语言产生能力呈负相关，较低的语言分数预示着更长的元认知反应时间。这些结果为语言是抽象思维和对抽象思维的元认知的重要辅助工具这一假设提供了一些支持。
