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Related Concept Videos

Language and Cognition01:27

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Language serves as a bridge between ideas and communication, influencing how individuals perceive and interact with the world. Psychologists have long debated whether language shapes thought or vice versa. This discussion gained grip with Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf in the 1940s, who proposed that language determines thought, a concept known as linguistic determinism. They suggested that the vocabulary and structure of a language influence how its speakers think and perceive reality.
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Related Experiment Video

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Examining Bilingual Language Control Using the Stroop Task
05:31

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Published on: February 26, 2020

Executive control influences linguistic representations.

Shiri Lev-Ari1, Boaz Keysar

  • 1Department of Psychology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA, shirilevari@gmail.com.

Memory & Cognition
|August 10, 2013
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Executive control influences how we understand word meanings, affecting linguistic representations. Poorer executive control leads to altered perceptions of word meanings and increased cross-linguistic interference in bilinguals.

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Psycholinguistics
  • Neuroscience

Background:

  • Word meanings are shaped by context.
  • Word processing mechanisms can also influence semantic representations.
  • Individual differences in cognitive processes may lead to variations in language representation.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate how executive control impacts linguistic representations.
  • To explore the relationship between executive control and the perception of word meanings (homonyms and polysemous words).
  • To examine the effect of executive control on cross-linguistic interference in bilingual individuals.

Main Methods:

  • Experimental manipulation of executive control.
  • Assessment of semantic similarity judgments for homonymous and polysemous words.
  • Measurement of cross-linguistic interference in bilingual participants.

Main Results:

  • Poorer executive control was associated with perceiving homonymous meanings as more similar and polysemous meanings as less similar.
  • Bilinguals with weaker executive control exhibited greater cross-linguistic interference.
  • Executive control influences the coactivation of competing and reinforcing linguistic terms.

Conclusions:

  • Executive control plays a crucial role in shaping linguistic representations.
  • Individual differences in executive control contribute to variations in semantic processing and representation.
  • Findings have implications for theories of language organization and semantic memory.