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Language and Cognition

Language and Cognition

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.

Frequency-dependent Selection

Frequency-dependent Selection

When the fitness of a trait is influenced by how common it is (i.e., its frequency) relative to different traits within a population, this is referred to as frequency-dependent selection. Frequency-dependent selection may occur between species or within a single species. This type of selection can either be positive—with more common phenotypes having higher fitness—or negative, with rarer phenotypes conferring increased fitness.

Components of Language

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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Mar 13, 2026

Comparing the Frequency Effect Between the Lexical Decision and Naming Tasks in Chinese

Comparing the Frequency Effect Between the Lexical Decision and Naming Tasks in Chinese

Published on: April 1, 2016

Disfluency effects on lexical selection.

Srdan Medimorec¹, Torin P Young¹, Evan F Risko¹

¹University of Waterloo, Canada.

|October 25, 2016

Summary

Introducing a typing delay, not finger disruption, enhances written lexical sophistication. This delay increases word diversity and use of less frequent words during essay composition.

Area of Science:

Cognitive Psychology
Psycholinguistics
Writing Studies

Background:

Previous studies suggest writing disfluencies, like one-handed typing, improve lexical sophistication.
Two theories explain this: one posits delay, the other disruption of finger-to-letter mappings.

Purpose of the Study:

To differentiate between delay-based and mapping-disruption-based accounts of disfluency effects on lexical sophistication.
To investigate the temporal dynamics of lexical selection in complex cognitive tasks.

Main Methods:

Participants composed essays under a typing condition with an introduced keystroke delay.
This delay mimicked disfluency but preserved normal finger-to-letter mappings.

Main Results:

Keywords:

Disfluency Language Lexical selection Lexical sophistication Writing

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Essays produced under the delay condition exhibited greater lexical diversity.
Writers in the delayed condition utilized less frequent words compared to controls.

Conclusions:

The findings support the delay-based account of how typing disfluencies enhance lexical sophistication.
Temporal factors in cognitive processes, like lexical selection, significantly influence complex task output.