Right here is my Wednesday blog, as promised.
First some good news, I got an A+ on second weekly test! Having got an A- on the first one I was definitely expecting my grade to go down, so I'm very happy that it the opposite has in fact happened. Sadly the next result I'll get back is my first stats exam, not quite as hopeful about that one!
Also the article that I submitted to the Psychology newsletter was accepted and Phil said it was good, yay. =]
So all in all a good week so far. I've spent the morning lying on my bed preparing my book for tomorrow's exam and trying to outline my speech for my POPPS lesson tomorrow - rather nervous about that one!
The research colloquium I attended on Monday was very interesting as I had anticipated. It was about the effect that language may have on our perceptions of the world we live in. I had studied this a little bit during AS level in my English Language lessons already so I was already at an advantage in understanding what Prof. Thierry was talking about! When he mentioned the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis it all came screaming back.
They investigated whether language affected perception using colours, and Greek and English participants. This is because here in England we only have one word for the colour blue, where as in Greece they have to 'Ghalazio' and 'Ble' both describing different shades. Participants were then given tiles with two dots on them, some were both classed as either ghalazio or ble and others had one of each, participants were then asked to rate from 1-10 how different the dots were.
The English participants rated all the tiles similarly noticing little difference between the different pairs, whereas intermediate bilinguals (poor English but good Greek) rated substantial differences between same and cross category pairs. Now here's the interesting bit; advanced bilinguals (good at both English and Greek) noticed some but very little difference. They then went on to using EEGs to measure brain reactions to the colours when displayed on a screen but I won't go into this as it's complicated and I'm still getting to grips with it myself! Could this mean though that the acquisition of English has changed there original perception of colour? It's early on in the investigation so who knows, interesting thought though isn't it?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Sounds very interesting! Homer's reference to the "wine-dark sea" in the Iliad used to be cited by people suggesting that human colour perception has changed over the last two thousand years. I'm not sure I believe it, but the fact that the study you mention examined speakers of Greek made me smile...
Damn Chris you beat me to it! I read that and thought 'hmmmm this is very like Homer's wine dark sea' :P
Haha the two of you are so similar. =P
Yes it is indeed debatable as to how true it is as you said on Skype I think Chris, but interesting none the less, and who knows what they may end up finding out. =P
Post a Comment