Open AccessWhat's in a name? Brain activity reveals categorization processes differ across languages
Author(s) -
Liu Chao,
Tardif Twila,
Mai Xiaoqin,
Gehring William J.,
Simms Nina,
Luo YueJia
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
human brain mapping
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.005
H-Index - 191
eISSN - 1097-0193
pISSN - 1065-9471
DOI - 10.1002/hbm.20974
Subject(s) - n400 , categorization , psychology , noun , morpheme , mandarin chinese , linguistics , linguistic relativity , noun phrase , object (grammar) , cognitive psychology , cognition , event related potential , philosophy , neuroscience
Abstract The linguistic relativity hypothesis proposes that speakers of different languages perceive and conceptualize the world differently, but do their brains reflect these differences? In English, most nouns do not provide linguistic clues to their categories, whereas most Mandarin Chinese nouns provide explicit category information, either morphologically (e.g., the morpheme “vehicle” che1 in the noun “train” huo3che1 ) or orthographically (e.g., the radical “bug” chong2 in the character for the noun “butterfly” hu2die2 ). When asked to judge the membership of atypical (e.g., train) vs. typical (e.g., car) pictorial exemplars of a category (e.g., vehicle), English speakers ( N = 26) showed larger N300 and N400 event‐related potential (ERP) component differences, whereas Mandarin speakers ( N = 27) showed no such differences. Further investigation with Mandarin speakers only ( N = 22) found that it was the morphologically transparent items that did not show a typicality effect, whereas orthographically transparent items elicited moderate N300 and N400 effects. In a follow‐up study with English speakers only ( N = 25), morphologically transparent items also showed different patterns of N300 and N400 activation than nontransparent items even for English speakers. Together, these results demonstrate that even for pictorial stimuli, how and whether category information is embedded in object names affects the extent to which typicality is used in category judgments, as shown in N300 and N400 responses. Hum Brain Mapp, 2010. © 2010 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.