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Updated: Jun 4, 2026

The (Spatial) Memory Game: Testing the Relationship Between Spatial Language, Object Knowledge, and Spatial Cognition
Published on: February 19, 2018
Linguistic influences on visual memory
1Department of Psychology, Rutgers University, Douglass College, 08903, New Brunswick, New Jersey.
Abstract:
The Whorf-Sapir hypothesis has raised considerable controversy in the literatures of psychology and anthropology. Several misconceptions of the hypothesis are reviewed, and the hypothesis was experimentally supported in a visual reproduction paradigm. Subjects were first given label training for a set of figures, and were then asked to recall by drawing the shapes. Training with categorized labels resulted in a 25% improvement in recall when compared to a condition with nonword (paralog) labels. Even stronger evidence of linguistic influence on visual memory was obtained by examining the order of recall. The conceptual relationships among labels strongly influenced the sequence of reproductions.
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