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Category: Project

Description: This study examines the impact of a second language on event phase categorisation. The aim is to test how strong a boost a new linguistic system provides when second language learners are trained to perceive events in a new way. Advanced Chinese learners of English form the participant base. The key linguistic contrast is that English has grammatical means to express resultative events in progress (e.g. the window is closing) while in Chinese these are typically expressed as completed (the window has closed). Learners receive resultative event categorisation training in four conditions: action-biased, completion-biased, with verbal distractors and with overt linguistic encoding in English. Three hypotheses guide the investigation: (1) if event categorisation is facilitated by the learners’ native language because it makes the key perceptual dimension linguistically salient, completion-biased event categorisation should be more accurate than action-biased categorisation; (2) if action-biased categorisation is performed with or without verbal interference, response accuracy should be better without concurrent verbal distraction; and (3) if overt linguistic encoding in English assists action-biased categorisation, overall performance should be more successful with overt event verbalisation than without it. Through a systematic manipulation of linguistic activity in different perceptual learning contexts, the ambition of the study is to inform theories about the interaction between language and thought.