Deck 7: Language, Culture, and Cognition in Development

Question 1

Differences in learning aspects of different languages:

A) do not influence how long it takes to learn a language.
B) affect how long it takes to learn a language.
C) impact the age at which children learn to narrate stories.
D) do not impact the age at which children learn to narrate stories.

Answer 1

A

Question 2

As early as 1949, Sapir documented how language and culture relate to each other as follows:

A) The "real world" is unconsciously built on the language habits of a group.
B) The language habits of a group grow out of their thoughts about the environment.
C) The environmental surroundings of a group form its language.
D) None of these statements are true.

Answer 2

A

Question 3

Comparisons of children's language skills across cultures indicate that:

A) there are more differences than similarities in how children learn.
B) there are more similarities than there are differences in how children learn.
C) differences in culture directly relate to differences in language learning.
D) the culture in which children live does not influence language acquisition processes.

Answer 3

B

Question 4

A comparison of child language learning in China and in the United States indicates that:

A) children learn verbs before they learn nouns.
B) children learn nouns and verbs according to their use in the language being learned.
C) children learn nouns before verbs.
D) children learn to use verbs as single-word utterances.

Question 5

George Orwell (1949) posited that:

A) Government would control people by controlling the words they are allowed to say.
B) thought controls language.
C) language controls thought.
D) government would control language and thought.

Question 6

The term language socialization refers to the way in which:

A) cultures differ in language use.
B) children socialize in their culture.
C) children become competent language users in their cultures.
D) adults socialize with children in the culture.

Question 7

Psychologists hold the view that:

A) language determines how babies and children develop cognitively.
B) cognitive development determines how children acquire language.
C) babies have thoughts independent of language.
D) None of these statements are true.

Question 8

The Whorfian Hypothesis is grounded in:

A) postmodern theory.
B) anthropology.
C) modern social science.
D) ancient philosophy.

Question 9

The course of language development is universal in regards to:

A) how and when children babble and gesture.
B) early vocabulary development.
C) grammatical learning milestones.
D) All of these statements are true.

Question 10

The early psychologist, Jean Piaget, posited that:

A) language is dependent on, but precedes thought.
B) thought is dependent on, but precedes language.
C) cognition develops as a result of nonlinguistic interactions with the world.
D) nonlinguistic interactions with the world cause language to develop.

Question 11

Parents and caregivers across cultures:

A) implicitly teach language to their children.
B) vary in how often and how much they explicitly teach language to their children
C) teach mainly through nursery rhymes a singing.
D) routinely correct their children's language errors.

Question 12

Comparisons of Japanese mothers' to American mothers' speech to their children illustrate:

A) that Japanese mothers encourage their children to tell stories.
B) that American mothers have little time for children to tell stories.
C) how mothers' language with children is culturally prescribed.
D) the origin of proverbs in each culture.

Question 13

The amount of time that caregivers in various cultures talk to children influences:

A) the speed at which they fully learn language.
B) cultural differences, but not how the child learns language.
C) how researchers make conclusions regarding child language learning.
D) how much children talk to each other.

Question 14

Questions about how ________________________ are central to the topic of language and culture

A) culture influences thought
B) thought influences culture
C) cognitive development and language are related
D) All of these choices are true.

Question 15

Benjamin Whorf explained inexplicable human behavior by:

A) examining the relationship between attitude and behavior.
B) evaluating the source of meaning to words.
C) comparing the analogies people use to their behavior.
D) analyzing the words a culture uses.

Question 16

Examining cultural differences suggests that:

A) language socialization is not related to teaching cultural values.
B) Japanese mothers use language to teach values in direct ways.
C) language is used to teach cultural values.
D) American mothers use language to teach values in indirect ways.

Question 17

Studies from the 1960's and 1970's regarding the Whorfian Hypothesis indicated that:

A) the color lexicon was determined by perception and memory for color.
B) words for color in a language affect memory for color.
C) color perception may have been too narrowly defined and further research on the hypothesis is required.
D) colors in an environment determine the lexical complexity for color terms.

Question 18

Early anthropological research on the Hopi language indicated that:

A) the verb forms carried information about the shape of objects.
B) verb forms carried information about the speaker.
C) verbs and nouns related to the environment.
D) the environment shaped the people's language.

Question 19

A comparison of German mothers' speech to children with American mothers' speech showed that:

A) German mothers use directives more often than American mothers.
B) American mothers use directives more often than German mothers.
C) American mothers use more negative statements than German mothers.
D) American mothers talk more about necessity.

Question 20

Shatz, Dyer, Marchetti & Massaro (2006) found that translations of children's literature are varied according to:

A) grammatical structure in the differing languages.
B) the targeted culture's values for childhood behavior.
C) the translator's sociocultural perspective.
D) lexical and semantic content of the text.

Question 21

A comparison between how English speakers and Greek speakers comprehend and use motion verbs from a story verbs indicated that:

A) children use the same motion verbs as adults to describe the story.
B) adults and children use different motion verbs to describe the story.
C) adults and children have the same understandings of the verbs, in the story, but express them differently in each language.
D) adults and children have the same understanding of the verbs in the story and express them in the same way in each language.

Question 22

Studies comparing children using English to children using Korean indicate that:

A) having words for an object propels the child to develop categories for the object.
B) knowing categories for an object propels the child to develop words for the object.
C) children are explicitly taught categories of objects.
D) categories of objects are learned before labels for objects.

Question 23

Studies on how children and adults use analogical reasoning:

A) indicate that reasoning is based on relational similarity.
B) support the claim that language is the medium of thought.
C) disprove the claim that language is the medium of thought.
D) bring up further questions for research.

Question 24

Slobin's (2003) research on language as an influence on "thinking for speaking" indicates that:

A) core concepts in each culture dictate how people describe events.
B) speaking about an event is like watching a film of the event.
C) pronouns are used similarly across cultures.
D) the syntactic and semantic units present in a language dictate how people talk about events.

Question 25

Slobin's (2001) research on children's narratives across differing languages suggests that:

A) explanations of the exact same event in different languages include different information about the event.
B) explanations of the exact same event in different languages include the same information about the event.
C) children tell stories the same way across cultures.
D) children tell stories differently across cultures.

Question 26

In a study of gender systems with Spanish and German speakers, the Whorfian Hypothesis:

A) was supported.
B) was used to examine how subjects described objects in German.
C) motivated researchers to compare use of gender categories.
D) was not supported.

Question 27

Further studies on how languages encode cognition focus on

A) noun phrases.
B) syntactic complexity.
C) verbs of motion.
D) semantic expressions.

Question 28

The term autobiographical memory refers to:

A) theories on how language forms memory of early childhood events.
B) the study of how children use pronouns to refer to memories of the past.
C) the view that females have more detailed memory than males.
D) the relationship of memory to language.

Question 29

Language as a source of cognitive-advancing information refers to:

A) the study of language and cognitive development.
B) increasing vocabulary to advance cognitive development.
C) an hypothesis about the role of language in cognitive development.
D) None of these statements are true.

Question 30

Researchers suggest that when children incorporate what they are told into their own understandings:

A) children told different things will have different understandings of the world.
B) they will independently conclude understandings of the world.
C) their language advances to the next level.
D) they are able to ask more questions.

Question 31

Evidence that language is a medium for thought suggests that:

A) lower-level thinking skills can be conducted without language.
B) higher-level thinking skills require language.
C) advanced language is necessary to higher-level thinking.
D) All of these statements are true.

Question 32

An example of the German-speaker and Spanish-speaker test of the Whorfian Hypothesis is that:

A) German speakers identify "bridge" with a feminine noun, and used feminine terms to describe the bridge.
B) Spanish speakers identify "bridge" as masculine, and used masculine terms to describe the bridge.
C) Spanish speakers described the bridge a big, dangerous, and sturdy.
D) All of these statements are true.

Question 33

A comparison of how English, Japanese and Korean speakers use verbs and nouns in early childhood illustrates that

A) Korean-speaking children used more verbs than English-speaking children.
B) English-speaking children used more nouns than Korean and Japanese speaking children.
C) Korean-speaking children acquired concepts of means/ends earlier than English speaking children.
D) All of these statements are true.

Question 34

Studies of children and their use of grammatical gender in language indicate:

A) different results from studies of adults.
B) similar results to studies of adults.
C) that Spanish-speaking children do not encode gender into their language at a young age.
D) that English-speaking children have mixed use of gender categories at a young age.

Question 35

Research on the use of spatial relations in language indicates that

A) Spanish speakers use the object as a frame of reference.
B) nearly all languages studied use "self" as the frame of reference.
C) English speakers use themselves as the frame of reference.
D) spatial relations are not encoded differently across cultures.

Question 36

Mothers from Western cultures:

A) limit how much children tell stories about their past.
B) encourage children to elaborate on stories from their past.
C) ask children questions about their past at earlier ages than mothers from Eastern cultures.
D) ask children questions about their past less frequently than mothers from Eastern cultures.

Question 37

The quote that "We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages" represents the view that:

A) gender determines how language is used.
B) categories of language establish how we look at the world.
C) culture and cognition predict how language is developed.
D) environment dictates how people use language.

Question 38

That language is a medium for thought is a view supported by:

A) Jean Piaget
B) Dan Slobin
C) Lev Vygotsky
D) Benjamin Whorf

Question 39

How children acquire the use of "gone" in the English language:

A) was the focus of studies by Gopnik and Meltzhoff (1984, 1986)
B) related to studies on how children label their perception of "disappearance."
C) supports the view that language and cognition are separate developmental processes.
D) was the subject of Roger Brown's (1958b) classic article on children's word learning.

Question 40

The theory that language and cognition develop in tandem with each other:

A) considers that children form language in developmental stages.
B) indicates that children develop cognition in stages.
C) is based on the view that words are a form of new information, which leads to forming new ideas, and new ideas form new language concepts.
D) None of these statements are true.

Question 41

How has the Whorfian hypothesis been used to test the relationship of nouns, verbs, and the development of the meanings they encode?

Question 42

Describe how cultures differ in how language is used with children. Define the term language socialization and tell how it is used in this context.

Question 43

Two researchers, Li and Gleitman (2002), ___________Levinson's (2003) finding that English speakers using a relative frame of reference get lost easier in a new city.

A) supported
B) disproved of
C) suggested further research is needed for
D) proposed a new hypothesis for

Question 44

Identify and briefly describe the main points in the text regarding the cultural influences on language development.

Question 45

Describe findings in research on the encoding of spatial relations in language and in thought.

Question 46

Describe research regarding the influence of language on the development of thought?

Question 47

Application of the Whorfian Hypothesis to how people speak an absolute coordinate system predicts that:

A) people should have a better frame of reference for where they are if their frame of reference is an absolute coordinate.
B) people should have a better frame of reference for where they are if they have a relative frame of reference.
C) people who have an absolute coordinate system for frame of reference can go to a new city and point to where they are with less geographical accuracy than those with a relative frame of reference.
D) None of these answers are true.

Question 48

The relationship of language skill to performance on tasks that assess theory of mind is explained by:

A) the view that Theory of Mind and language expression are interdependent.
B) observation that Theory of Mind and language expression are developed through conversation.
C) the view that language is needed in order to make observations related to Theory of Mind.
D) All of these statements are true.

Question 49

A 2003 study comparing how Korean- and English-speaking children and adults:

A) demonstrates that the Whorfian Hypothesis does not hold true when applied to semantics.
B) supports the application of the Whorfian Hypothesis to how special distinctions are made in language.
C) compared how children and adults described tight-fitting containment, or putting letter shapes into a puzzle.
D) indicated that children used the same terms to describe tight-fitting containment across cultures.

Question 50

Describe how the Whorfian Hypothesis relates to the discussion of language as an influence on cognition. Include a discussion of the roots of Whorf's early research.

Question 51

Theory of mind researchers used the story of Little Red Riding Hood to examine

A) childhood expectations.
B) the age at which children can project what may or may not happen in a story.
C) childhood perspective on events in a story.
D) beliefs children hold and that guide behavior.

Question 52

What are the arguments supporting the hypothesis that language and thought are entirely independent of each other?

Question 53

Discuss research on analogical reasoning and describe how it relates to questions regarding language as the medium of thought.

Question 54

What does the "Theory Theory" mean and how does it explain that language and cognition develop in tandem to each other?

Question 55

Define autobiographical memory and tell how cross-cultural studies illustrate how language might be the medium of thought.