Effect of Words on Perception

September 16th, 2007 Fred McVittie

The words that we speak seem to have a concrete effect on perception. Whilst the claims of Whorf and Sapir are fairly well disproved, it is evident that there is a relationship between language and thought, and that one’s perceptions can be affected by the language that we use. Lera Brodowsky at Stanford University found that Russian speakers were better able to distinguish between various shades of blue, a phenomenon which she attributed to the fact that the Russian language has a clear distinction between light and dark blue which is not emphasised in English. The distinction in the language allowed the Russian speakers to create different categories of colour which the English speakers had not, conceptualising all blues as belonging to the same broad category. This difference is categorisation, supported by difference is language use, produced a difference in perceptual acuity. It is important to note, in contrast to the Sapir-Whorf model, the English speakers were just as able to identify the distinction in the various shades of blue, the difference lay in the speed with which they were able to carry out this distinction. There was was no fundamental difference in the ability to see the colours, only in the difference to swiftly respond to small distinctions in those colours.

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