Something to Consider • 319According to Winawer, the Russians’ faster response when stimuli were from
different categories occurred because their language distinguishes between goloby
and siniy. One way of looking at this is that learning the different labels makes it
more likely that the colors will be perceived as different, and this makes it easier to
quickly determine which square matches the one on the top. This effect does not
occur for English-speakers because all of the colors are simply blue. These results,
therefore, support the Sapir-Whorf idea that language can affect cognition.
Another approach to studying the relation between color perception and lan-
guage was pursued by Aubrey Gilbert and coworkers (2006), who did an experiment
to determine if there is a difference between how colors are processed in the left and
right hemispheres of the brain. The basic idea behind this approach is that language
is processed in the left hemisphere. Thus, if language does affect color perception, it
would be more likely to do so when colors are viewed in the right visual fi eld (which
projects to the left hemisphere) than in the left visual fi eld (● Figure 11.19).
To test this idea, Gilbert and coworkers presented participants with a display like
the one in ● Figure 11.20a, in which all the squares in the wheel were the same (green
in this example) except for a target square (blue). On some trials the target was from
the same category as the other squares (for example, all squares were green, but the
target was a slightly different green). On other trials, the target was from a different
category, as in the example in Figure 11.20a. The participants’ task was to push a
button indicating whether the target was on the left or right side of the wheel.
The results, shown in Figure 11.20b, indicate that when the display was
viewed in the left (nonlanguage) visual fi eld (left pair of bars), the reaction time to
identify the target was the same whether the target was from the same category or
from a different category. Because objects in the left visual fi eld activate the right
hemisphere, language would not be involved. However, when the display was in
the right visual fi eld, reaction times were faster when the target was from a differ-
ent category (right pair of bars). If the category labels blue and green are deter-
mined by language, this is what we would expect. Thus, when the nonlanguage
(right) hemisphere is activated, no category effect occurs, but when the language
(left) hemisphere is activated, a category effect does occur. So, does language affect
perception? From the results of this experiment, the answer would seem to be that
it depends on which part of the brain is involved (Reiger & Kay, 2009).
Other experiments have demonstrated differences in how Westerners and East
Asians think about objects (Iwao & Gentner, 1997), numbers (Lucy & Gaskins,
1997), and space (Levinson, 1996) and how processing numbers when doing●FIGURE 11.19 Stimuli presented
to the left visual fi eld activate the
right hemisphere of the brain. Stimuli
presented to the right visual fi eld
activate the left hemisphere.
Left hemisphere Right hemisphereSpeechLeft visual field Right visual field●FIGURE 11.20 (a) Color wheel used
in Gilbert et al.’s (2006) experiment. The
participants’ task was to indicate, as
quickly as possible, which side contained
the “odd” color. (b) Result of the
experiment. The left pair of bars shows
that when the color wheel was in the left
visual fi eld, reaction times were the same
whether the odd color was in the same
or diff erent category as the other colors.
The right pair of bars shows that when
the wheel was presented in the right
visual Field, reaction times were faster
when the odd color was from a diff erent
category (for example, blue vs. green).
(Source: A. L. Gilbert, T. Regier, P. Kay, & R. B. Ivry,
“Whorf Hypothesis Is Supported in the Right Visual
Field but Not the Left,” Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences, 103, 489–494, 2006,
Fig. 1. Copyright © 2006 National Academy of
Sciences, U.S.A. Reprinted by permission.)
390400410420430440450460470Reaction time (ms)(a) (b)Left
visual fieldRight
visual fieldTarget from same category
Target from different categoryCopyright 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part.