TY - JOUR
T1 - More than meets the eye
T2 - The role of language in binding and maintaining feature conjunctions: Research article
AU - Dessalegn, Banchiamlack
AU - Landau, Ba Rbara
PY - 2008/2/1
Y1 - 2008/2/1
N2 - We investigated the effects of language on vision by focusing on a well-known problem: the binding and maintenance of color-location conjunctions. Four-year-olds performed a task in which they saw a target (e.g., a split square, red on the left and green on the right) followed by a brief delay and then were asked to find the target in an array including the target, its reflection (e.g., red on the right and green on the left), and a square with a different geometric split. Errors were overwhelmingly reflections. This finding shows that the children failed to maintain color-location conjunctions. Performance improved when targets were accompanied by sentences specifying color and direction (e.g., "the red is on the left"), but not when the conjunction was highlighted using a nonlinguistic cue (e.g., flashing, pointing, changes in size), nor when sentences specified a nondirectional relationship (e.g., "the red is touching the green"). The relation between children's matching performance and their long-term knowledge of directional terms suggests two distinct mechanisms by which language can temporarily bridge delays, providing more stable representations.
AB - We investigated the effects of language on vision by focusing on a well-known problem: the binding and maintenance of color-location conjunctions. Four-year-olds performed a task in which they saw a target (e.g., a split square, red on the left and green on the right) followed by a brief delay and then were asked to find the target in an array including the target, its reflection (e.g., red on the right and green on the left), and a square with a different geometric split. Errors were overwhelmingly reflections. This finding shows that the children failed to maintain color-location conjunctions. Performance improved when targets were accompanied by sentences specifying color and direction (e.g., "the red is on the left"), but not when the conjunction was highlighted using a nonlinguistic cue (e.g., flashing, pointing, changes in size), nor when sentences specified a nondirectional relationship (e.g., "the red is touching the green"). The relation between children's matching performance and their long-term knowledge of directional terms suggests two distinct mechanisms by which language can temporarily bridge delays, providing more stable representations.
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U2 - 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02066.x
DO - 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02066.x
M3 - Article
C2 - 18271868
AN - SCOPUS:38949168093
SN - 0956-7976
VL - 19
SP - 189
EP - 195
JO - Psychological Science
JF - Psychological Science
IS - 2
ER -