Relational Language Helps Children Remember Configurations Better
It is known that in certain contexts, language can influence thought. For example, studies have shown that labeling an object brings out categorical thinking for both children and adults (Lupyan, 2008, Lupyan, 2012; Lupyan et al., 2020; Sloutsky & Fisher, 2012; Smith, Jones, Landau, Gershkoff-Stowe, & Samuelson, 2002; Vales & Smith, 2015). However, many concepts require a learner to not just understand one idea or object but also other ideas in relation to each other. Situations where this happens, for example, is in mathematics. A study by Yuan et al (2023) investigated how relational language can improve the learning of concepts that require knowledge about related ideas, such as math, by guiding attention.
How does language change thought?
One way that language can change thought is through labeling. A study by Lupyan and Thompson-Schill (2012) found that hearing labels (such as “dog”) improved the efficiency of finding visual representations of the label in a complex image (ex: searching for a dog amongst other animals). Seeing an image of the object or hearing a sound associated with the object beforehand did not prove as effective.
Based on this idea, the Label Feedback Hypothesis by Lupyan (2012) was proposed. It states that labels influence perception by changing the form of mental representation caused by language. For example, hearing the label “dog” creates a categorical representation of a dog, causing animals that are similar to dogs to be perceived as more similar to each other, and animals that are not dog-like to appear even more different.
A study by Vales and Smith (2015) found that pairing an image of an object with hearing the object’s labels improved children’s efficiency in finding an object among distractors. Only seeing a visual preview of the object was not as effective. The study shows how language can change visual attention. Both the theory by Lupyan and the theory by Vales and Smith explain how hearing object labels can change ongoing perceptual processes.
However, in real-life, many learning tasks require a learner to understand the relations between multiple items and not just a single item. For this reason, Yuan et al (2023) investigated how relational language changed relational representation by guiding children’s attention visually. Relational representation is crucial for learning about spatial relations.
They found that relational language, which means language which is concerned with how two or more things are connected, can improve relational representation (visualizations of how objects or things are connected). This happens through an attention mechanism in which bodily aspects of attention directed towards external objects (D’Angelo, 2019).
In the study, four-year-old children were given a color-location conjunction task, where they were asked to memorize a two-color square, split either vertically or horizontally (e.g., red on the left, blue on the right), and later recall the same configuration from its mirror reflection. During the encoding phase, children in the experimental condition heard relational language (e.g., “Red is on the left of blue”), while those in the control condition heard generic non-relational language (e.g., “Look at this one, look at it closely”). When asked to recall the configurations, children in the experimental condition were better at choosing the correct relational representation between the two colors compared to the control group.
To test the sustained effect of language and the role of attention, during the second half of the study, the experimental condition was given generic non-relational language. There was a sustained advantage in the children in the experimental condition. They continued to have both better behavioral accuracies and attention patterns.
Yuan et al (2023) found that visual attention patterns influenced by language structures can have a big impact on the encoding of new information and the constructions of mental representations, even when attentional guidance is no longer there during a particular task. These processes could explain the fact that relational language can enhance learning systems of relations. Overall, their findings suggest that relational language improves relational representation by guiding learners’ attention. This lasts over time even when there is no language involved.
This study demonstrates that language interacts with our attention, which impacts how we learn about the world. Relational language for this reason may be part of the reason why humans have been so successful. This could be why our non-linguistic pets can’t learn math (Silly Milo)!
Sources:
D’Angelo, D. The phenomenology of embodied attention. Phenom Cogn Sci 19, 961–978 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-019-09637-2
Lei Yuan, Miriam Novack, David Uttal, Steven Franconeri,
Language systematizes attention: How relational language enhances relational representation by guiding attention,
Cognition, Volume 243, 2024, 105671, ISSN 0010–0277, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2023.105671.
