the correlation between language, thoughts and intelligence

[Blarg]

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Does having words for things determine if you can think about them?

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there's this very interesting study by a couple cognitive psychologists that i recently read. apparently, the russian language has different words for light blue and dark blue, whereas english obviously requires you to use an adjective when discriminating between the two. in the study, the authors had native russian speakers and native english speakers discriminate between different shades of different colors, and whereas the native english speakers were unable to differentiate between different shades of blue (the differences were quite subtle), the native russian speakers did it with relative ease. pretty interesting results as they suggest that language influences your perception of the world and by extension your thoughts about the world. obviously, i'm making a big jump comparing the ability to see different colors to how we think about the world, but it is pretty interesting that there is empirical validation for this.

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I think this is true. It can be very hard to nail down a coalescing thought until you find a word for it. Then suddenly it falls into shape and perspective, not just because you couldn't recall a word to characterize and describe your thought until just then, but because you couldn't properly form the thought itself without using the thought-concepts of words to trace it out. The word helps shape the thought, and bring it to the workbench of consciousness long enough for any necessary further work.

[Blarg]

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Blarg - your comment, "larger vocab correlates with financial success" - leveling? Can't tell.

-Al

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Read it here and there over the years. Seems fair; larger vocabularies tend to go with higher education. And many better jobs require somewhat formal communication skills, from report writing, to oral and written presentations, even to letter and memo writing.

[Aloysius]

Blarg - yeah, definitely makes sense at first blush, I just immediately thought of my brother (who's a Phd in literature in a top U.S. program) - he and all his humanities Phd friends are pretty damn poor haha [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

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I think this is true. It can be very hard to nail down a coalescing thought until you find a word for it. Then suddenly it falls into shape and perspective, not just because you couldn't recall a word to characterize and describe your thought until just then, but because you couldn't properly form the thought itself without using the thought-concepts of words to trace it out. The word helps shape the thought, and bring it to the workbench of consciousness long enough for any necessary further work.

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I haven't thought much about this concept but it's definitely interesting. I'm sure every one of us has had a "eureka" moment, wrt finding the right word to express a feeling or concept.

-Al

[Pyromaniac]

This also reminds me of a psych study that I read once (but no one else ever seems to have heard of it, so I trot it out given any excuse to do so):

They put a woman in the middle of a suspension bridge over a high gorge, then had each participant walk out over the bridge and stand there, swaying over open air, and answer a bunch of questions (dummy questions). Afterwards, someone else asked them to rate the interviewer's attractiveness.

Then they repeated this, but with the female interviewer on a street corner. Same woman, same outfit/clothing, same clipboard of questions...just no bridge in the air. These men rated her lower in attractiveness than the men who'd been on the bridge.

The cognitive psychological explanation was that the men on the bridge had some *unnamed feeling* inside them, and when they (internally, subconsciously) tried to figure out what it was and put it into language and make sense of it, they decided it was interpreted as "physical attraction" to the woman on the bridge. Whereas what the feeling *really* (if that word applies here) was, was "anxiety/fear" from being on the bridge.

So our feelings exist only insofar as we're able to define them through language. And if we define them incorrectly, that's what they become.

[Pyromaniac]

hmm, google. doh. and not a street corner and involving a phone #, not a rate-this-girl. close enough otherwise, i guess.

One account, LA Times

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For years, scientists have known that attraction is more likely to happen when people are aroused, be it through laughter, anxiety or fear. Aron tested that theory in 1974 on the gorgeous but spine-chilling heights of the Capilano Canyon Suspension Bridge in Vancouver, British Columbia -- a 5-foot wide, 450-foot, wobbly, swaying length of wooden slats and wire cable suspended 230 feet above rocks and shallow rapids.

His research team waited as unsuspecting men, between ages 18 and 35 and unaccompanied by women, crossed over. About halfway across the bridge, each man ran into an attractive young woman claiming to be doing research on beautiful places. She asked him a few questions and gave him her phone number in case he had follow-up questions.

The experiment was repeated upriver on a bridge that was wide and sturdy and only 10 feet above a small rivulet. The same attractive coed met the men, brandishing the same questionnaire.

The result? Men crossing the scary bridge rated the woman on the Capilano bridge more attractive. And about half the men who met her called her afterward. Only two of 16 men on the stable bridge called.

Fear got their attention and aroused emotional centers in the brain. "People are more likely to feel aroused in a scary setting," Aron says. "It's pretty simple. You're feeling physiologically aroused, and it's ambiguous why. Then you see an attractive person, and you think, 'Oh, that's why.' "


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[Bork]

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I think this is true. It can be very hard to nail down a coalescing thought until you find a word for it. Then suddenly it falls into shape and perspective, not just because you couldn't recall a word to characterize and describe your thought until just then, but because you couldn't properly form the thought itself without using the thought-concepts of words to trace it out. The word helps shape the thought, and bring it to the workbench of consciousness long enough for any necessary further work.

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What do you mean nail down a thought? Do you mean think about it in precise terms? I think you can think about a concept say 'gravity' for example in precise terms without having any word for it. People have done this. You did say it would be very hard (not impossible) though. I think you're right, but it is not because of language it is because when you don't have a word for something it is likely something you haven't thought about consciously very much. It is likely a newish concept to you and thus will be harder to think about. This is not a function of language though just familiarity with the meaning/concept. It just becomes convenient early on for us to attach symbols to the concept, because it helps us remember it and relate it to other concepts. So, the concepts which we don't have words for are ones we haven't thought much about and thus are harder to 'nail down'.



You have the thought, but you couldn't properly form it? I think it was already at the workbench of consciousness if you were trying to find the right word/description for it.

I suspect the reason that these thoughts are 'suddenly falling into shape' when you use the 'thought-concepts' (meanings?) of words to trace it out is that you are doing some thinking and language is helping you organize this process. You are still using concepts, the words are just symbols for the concepts. The fact that you are saying it is not because you couldn't recall a word shows that you DISAGREE with what you quoted.

Obviously what language you speak influences your thoughts (because you will attach different symbols to identical concepts)... In some cases you will have thoughts and feeling which your language has no symbol for. In those cases you can still relate that concept with other concepts it is just that you will likely not have heard/read other's thoughts on them so it will have to be more difficult and original thinking on your part. The question is 'does the language you speak cause you to experience colors differently.' Or more generally does it cause you to experience the world in a different way. Do you feel different emotions based on whether you speak Japanese or Hopi? The reason these people had trouble differentiating is more likely that they simply can't express themselves as well wrt those colors. Being born Russian will not make you better at differentiating colors internally or make certain colors look the same to you or make you capable of feeling a certain level of anger you wouldn't have otherwise been able to.

[Aloysius]

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This also reminds me of a psych study that I read once (but no one else ever seems to have heard of it, so I trot it out given any excuse to do so):

They put a woman in the middle of a suspension bridge over a high gorge, then had each participant walk out over the bridge and stand there, swaying over open air, and answer a bunch of questions (dummy questions). Afterwards, someone else asked them to rate the interviewer's attractiveness.

Then they repeated this, but with the female interviewer on a street corner. Same woman, same outfit/clothing, same clipboard of questions...just no bridge in the air. These men rated her lower in attractiveness than the men who'd been on the bridge.

The cognitive psychological explanation was that the men on the bridge had some *unnamed feeling* inside them, and when they (internally, subconsciously) tried to figure out what it was and put it into language and make sense of it, they decided it was interpreted as "physical attraction" to the woman on the bridge. Whereas what the feeling *really* (if that word applies here) was, was "anxiety/fear" from being on the bridge.

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Cool experiment - but it just proves that our judgment / feelings are impacted by our context, no? Because:

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So our feelings exist only insofar as we're able to define them through language. And if we define them incorrectly, that's what they become.

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I'm not sure how you come to this conclusion based on the experiment.

-Al

[El Diablo]

kurosh,

Good thread. I have a lot of thoughts on this that maybe I'll get to later. But, two quick points.

1: Based on lots of anecdotal evidence, I think that people who grow up bilingual have an easier time learning lots of things (not just languages). Especially if the languages are completely different. I feel like people's brains get wired a little differently when they learn two completely different ways of communicating in their early formative years.

2: Most people who read a lot at an early age also seem to turn out smarter than most. I suspect there are lots of other contributing factors here (prob a culture/family of education, maybe better resources, etc), but I do think that reading is about much more than just vocabulary and information. Reading a ton at an early age imo exposes people to different thought and logic processes and perspectives, all of which contribute to overall smarter people.

[gumpzilla]

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2: Most people who read a lot at an early age also seem to turn out smarter than most. I suspect there are lots of other contributing factors here (prob a culture/family of education, maybe better resources, etc), but I do think that reading is about much more than just vocabulary and information. Reading a ton at an early age imo exposes people to different thought and logic processes and perspectives, all of which contribute to overall smarter people.

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Do you think this is correlation or causation? That is, are smarter people just reading earlier? It's something I've wondered about quite a bit; I started reading when I was 2. I do agree with the spirit of what you're saying, though.

[suzzer99]

I like to think that I can pick up all kinds of things about a culture just by listening to them speak in their native tongue. I'm sure this is complete nonsense, but it's fun anyway.

Thai: such a beautiful, lyrical language - it's hard to imagine barking orders to pillage a city in Thai

Russian: complex, mysterious, there's something going on there

I tried to do some others but they just come sounding like trite stereotypes of that culture. It's hard to put into words (!) It would be cool if there was some kind of experiment that isolated people who grew up in the exact same culture, just speaking different languages, to see if there were any general differences. But I can't imagine how that situation could come up naturally.