This study explores the relationship between language and thought in similarity judgments by testing how monolingual children who speak languages with partial typological differences in motion description respond to visual motion event stimuli. Participants were either Chinese- or English-speaking, 3-year-olds, 8-year-olds and adults who judged the similarity between caused motion scenes in a match-to-sample task. The results suggest, first of all, that the two younger groups of 3-year-olds are predominantly path-oriented, irrespective of language, as evidenced by their significantly longer fixation (...) on path-match videos rather than manner-match videos in a preferential looking scheme. Using categorical measurement of overt choices, older children and adults also showed a shared tendency of being more path-oriented. However, the analysis using continuous measurement of reaction time revealed significant variations in spatial cognition that can be related to linguistic differences: English speakers tended to be more manner-oriented while Chinese speakers were equally manner- and path-oriented. On the whole, our findings indicate a likelihood that children’s non-linguistic thought is similar prior to internalising the lexicalisation pattern of motion events in their native languages, but shows divergences after such habitual use, thus suggesting that the pattern of non-linguistic thought may be linked, among other things, to linguistic structure. (shrink)

Parafoveal preview benefit is an implicit measure of lexical activation in reading. PB has been demonstrated for orthographic and phonological but not for semantically related information in English. In contrast, semantic PB is obtained in German and Chinese. We propose that these language differences reveal differential resource demands and timing of phonological and semantic decoding in different orthographic systems.

Memory of event outcomes is a topic increasingly discussed in the field of event language and cognition. This study approaches how language influences memory of event outcomes from the under-explored perspective of the verb’s “fulfilment type”, a property formulated in Talmy’s event integration theory. This property indicates the extent to which verbs depict fulfilment of intentions. Through two experiments, we explored how verbs’ fulfilment type properties shape the text-based memory of event outcomes according to their perceived likelihood of intention fulfilment. (...) There are two major findings. First, people tend to have “fulfilment preferences” and infer that intention fulfilment is more likely than intention non-fulfilment. Second, intention-unfulfilled event outcomes tend to be remembered better for event descriptions that trigger no fulfilment perferences. This study contributes to event language and memory research by demonstrating how language-generated inferences can influence established memory of event outcomes. (shrink)