Do bilinguals see the world differently?: The conceptual transfer of colors and motion events by Japanese children at an English immersion school

Shogo Sakurai, Purdue University

Abstract

This study explores how learning a second/foreign language may affect cognition by studying second and fifth grade Japanese-English bilingual children (n=10 respectively) on color and motion event cognitions vis-à-vis English-speaking monolingual counterparts (n=12 and n=10 respectively). There has been a resurgent interest in linguistic relativity in recent years, that is, the relationship between language and cognition. However, many of the extant studies focus on monolingual speakers and compare cross-linguistic differences. In the current study, the focus was placed on Japanese-English bilingual children whose language pair (i.e., Japanese and English) and ages (7-8 years and 10-11 years) have rarely been investigated. Moreover, this study ambitiously examined the degree of language effect on two qualitatively different cognitive domains, vis., colors and motion events. The results revealed certain tendencies vis-à-vis the relationship between language and cognition. First, color cognition is more susceptible to a second/foreign language effect than motion event cognition among the bilingual participants. Second, in each cognitive domain, linguistic-mediated tasks generated stronger language influence than non-linguistic tasks. Third, both first (i.e., Japanese) and second (i.e., English) language development affected the degree of language effect on cognition. Overall, this study supports both linguistic relativity and thinking-for-speaking hypotheses in terms of the extent that language affects color and motion event cognitions by employing both linguistic-mediated and non-linguistic tasks.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Wei, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Bilingual education|Cognitive psychology

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