9.11: What is the Connection between Language and Cognition?
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In the 1950s Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf proposed the hypothesis that the language of a culture affects the way people think and perceive. The controversial theory was question by Elenor Rosch who studied colour perception of Americans and Danis who are members of an stone-age agricultural culture in the Iran. Americans have several different categories for colour as for example blue, red, yellow and so on. Danis just have two main colour categories. The participants were ask to recall colours which were shown to them before. That experiment did not show significant differences in colour perception and memory as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis presumes. File:Color-naming exp.jpg Color-naming experiment by Roberson et al. (2000)
Nevertheless a support for the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis was Debi Roberson's demonstration for categorical perception based on the colour perception experiment by Rosch. The participants, a group of English-speaking British and another group of Berinmos from New Guinea were ask to name colours of a board with colour chips. The Berinmos distinguish between five different colour categories and the denotation of the colour names is not equivalent to the British colour denotation. Apart from these differences there are huge differences in the organisation of the colour categories. The colours named green and blue by British participants where categorised as nol which also covers colours like light-green, yellow-green, and dark blue. Other colour categories differ similarly.
The result of Roberson's experiment was that it is easier for British people to discriminate between green and blue whereas Berinmos have less difficulties distinguishing between Nol and Wap. The reaction to colour is affected by language, by the vocabulary we have for denoting colours. It is difficult for people to distinguish colours from the same colour category but people have less trouble differentiating between colours from different categories. Both groups have categorical colour perception but the results for naming colours depends on how the colour categories were named. All in all it was shown that categorical perception is influenced by the language use of different cultures.
These experiments about perception and its relation to cultural language usage leads to the question whether thought is related to language with is cultural differences.