Ashley's Computational Models / Words as a window to thought: Object REpresentation

• we must specify all parts of the model to compare and falsify
• advantages: these models not have working memory limitation like our minds, and they can help to compute complex things
• a model supposedly reveals true or real behavior
• they ensure reproducibility in scientific thinking
• as new models are developed for more complex things, we need to try and find the simplest model that displays the data accurately
• Major reasons to uses these models:
• very repeatable
• it makes reasoning from different scientists consistent
• people may make mistakes in their reasoning, but this helps eliminate that... but they can be confusing. (con)

wikibook: worf: language changes our perception of reality

Object Representation:

• Comparing english to other languages, do these differences lead to different perceptions of objects?
• linguistic determinism? (grammatical differences)
• English has both count nouns (ex. a cat, two cats), and mass nouns (mud, not one mud or two mud)
• Madarian and japanese have only mass nouns
• So, does this change their perception of those objects?
• the authors say, maybe not.
• Words as windows - an alternative to whorf theory.
• words reveal the structure of thought, but don't modify it.
• so, neither is the complete determinate of the other. 
• Perhaps thoughts are not just represented in language, it can be represented separately from the words
• ex. I know what I want to say, but I can't find the words
• How should english speakers and Japanese speakers treat novel things (like the blicket test)?
• english speakers are more likely to treat novel things as objects (countable things) than just more "stuff"
• so, japanese children thought it was more of a substance
• But the authors argue that the japanese and english children have different information, there are 2 possibilities for English children and only one for japanese children
• count nouns are more common in english, so they are biased toward a count non, but that bias does not exist for the japanese children... so they are reasoning from different information.
• They found a way to make both of them (substance and shape) equally important, and under those conditions, things evened up between the two.
• Ratings experiment (whether they were more object like or more substance like) showed no difference either
• So, testing bilinguals: its not so much based in a different perception, but a different way of expressing.
• Can mass nouns ever be for countable individuals?
• mass nouns such as jewelry, furniture, etc. are mass nouns??? Or count nouns?? Should not refer to countable individuals just because they have no count syntax. 
• Quantity judgement task
• count noun: determined by number (ex. cups)
• mass nouns: determined by determined by volume (ex. ketchup)
• this implies that the syntax is not the issue thats at the core...
• weird nouns like string, or strings? does both mass and count... 
• but just because Japanese children don't have mass AND count nouns, doesn't mean they are perceiving things differently.

 Do english speakers rate likelihood to refer to object

-Results show no difference between english and japanese speakers.

-They are perceiving shape to the same degree. They are perceiving shape in a similar manner.

11. Do english and japanese speakers make different judgments?

-English and Japanese speakers are equally likely to perceive objects as substance. English speakers are often affected by syntax and Japanese speakers are about right in the middle (in the degree to which they judge something as a shape as opposed to just substance).

-Language doesn't seem to have much bearing on your judgments (as opposed to the Whorfian claim – this claim does not seem to be supported because of it's degree).

12. Development – From a Whorfian perspective one might argue that learning syntax is a crucial thing that shapes your understanding which would make you think that maybe the learning of your syntax of language comes first and then your understanding of the world falls into place to fall in line with this syntax. So, do children learn meaning (semantics) first or syntax first?

-Manual Search Task: child watched the exp. Put balls in the box, then the child is allowed to remove a ball. At the end, if the exp. Removes balls – to what extent does the child notice that and continue to search?

-For 12 month olds: if you have three balls only, then they keep searching for the missing balls that the exp. Took. If you have four or more balls – they don't do it anymore. There is some fundamental break between three and four years old.

-For 22 month olds: they begin to search for the ball – about the same age when they begin producing plural nouns. In fact, infants were more likely to distinguish singular and plural sets if they produced plural nouns in their speech. The language milestone and performance milestone are come to at the same time.

-Since count nouns have this syntactical feature – that their ability to do this would be driven by language. (Fits with Whorfian claim). This also applies to other children – both in japanese and mandarin languages. The syntactical features is not a crucial factor driving understanding of the world.

13. Claims

-This is not a claim that language has no influence on thoughts. Our perception of reality seems to be more driven by reality rather than by language. (Thank goodness...)