CAN there be thought before we have language, or does language define the way we think?
Many researchers believe that language dictates particular ways of thinking about the world, partly because concepts expressed in one language may not exist in another. But a study of infants has come up with a different explanation.
Psychologists Susan Hespos from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, and Elizabeth Spelke from Harvard University have found that babies brought up in an English-speaking environment can clearly understand a concept that is not expressed in English. This shows that while language may emphasise certain ways of thinking, the ability to think conceptually does not depend on learning a particular language.
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The researchers considered a much-studied concept that is clearly defined in Korean, but not in English: whether one object fits tightly or loosely with another. In Korean, people use a different verb to describe placing something such as a shoe in a small box in which it fits tightly, or in a large box, where it is a loose fit. The team wanted to know whether the concept develops only as a result of learning Korean.
English-speaking adults didn鈥檛 divide tight-fitting or loose-fitting displays into two clear groups, as Korean speakers would 鈥� and as English speakers do easily for the more familiar linguistic concept of 鈥渋n鈥� versus 鈥渙n鈥�.
But five-month-old infants brought up in an English-speaking environment did seem to recognise the two distinct categories. The researchers probed the babies鈥� thoughts by measuring how quickly they got bored with looking at successive pairs of objects grouped in either a tight-fitting or loose-fitting way. If the infants saw the second set-up as being the same as the first, they got bored almost immediately. If they saw the second grouping as novel, the display recaptured their attention.
The researchers showed that the infants did indeed seem to consider two pairs of objects from the same conceptual category as more alike than pairs from different categories (Nature, vol 430, p 453).
鈥淪ome people suggest that babies don鈥檛 have full-blown concepts, that they wait until language imposes categories on them,鈥� Hespos says. 鈥淏ut we specifically took a linguistic concept, and find that it does exist before language.鈥� While she has no doubt that language influences how we think, she says it seems to draw attention to certain relationships between objects that we already understand, rather than shaping new ways of thinking about objects.
鈥淭here is a huge debate now about the role that language plays in the formation of concepts,鈥� says Paul Bloom, a psychologist from Yale University. 鈥淭his study backs the idea that what language does is allow us to communicate about concepts that we already have. It鈥檚 not primarily a way to create new concepts.鈥�