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Threats to the health of our environment are numerous, ranging from air and water pollution to deforestation, overpopulation, and climate change. Much research in fields such as biology, earth science, and engineering is devoted to documenting, understanding, and attempting to mitigate the harm. The root cause of all such problems, however, is human behavior. As such, changes to human behavior—and the internal processes that drive them—are essential to solutions. Cognitive scientists therefore have a critical role to play in sustainability research and interventions (e.g., Jaipal, 2014; Weir, 2018, 2019).

Is the influence of language on attention previously found in controlled, single-task lab contexts reduced or absent whenother factors (i.e. goals) influence attention, as in everyday life? The current studies examined whether language effects oneye-movements and recall emerge in richer task conditions. Experiment 1 examined English speakers use of agentive/non-agentive language during scene description on memory for the agent, similar to Fausey and Boroditsky (2011) whilealtering scene complexity and adding eye-tracking. Experiment 2 contrasted the standard describe task with one moretypical of everyday scene processing: predicting what happens next. Eye-tracking results from Experiment 1 supportan influence of language on distribution of attention. However, the absence of a significant memory difference in bothexperiments suggests that the language effect is not robust enough to have a meaningful impact on memory in rich taskconditions. Ultimately, the data suggested even the original effects are difficult to obtain.

Although children may productively use concrete nouns after limited exposure, complete mastery of adult-like patterns of noun usage can take up to 14 years. We evaluated whether a transition from universal to language-specific naming is part of the refinement in later lexical development, and we compared how this refinement plays out in monolingual versus bilingual children. We collected free naming data for pictures of nearly 200 household containers from 499 Belgian children, aged 5 to 14, and adults, raised with either (a) only French, (b) only Dutch, or (c) both French and Dutch. Both monolingual and bilingual 5-year olds produced largely shared naming patterns, and for both groups, naming patterns became more language-specific and also more consistent within-language over time. However, monolinguals and bilinguals diverged in some aspects of their developmental profiles. Monolinguals started to introduce language-specificities to their naming pattern beginning at age 8, but differentiation between languages did not emerge for bilinguals until age 12. Consensus on name choice increased across ages for both groups, but bilinguals showed more consensus at all ages, reflecting smaller vocabularies and less differentiation. Thus monolingual and bilingual children follow a similar trajectory from shared to language-specific patterns of word use, but bilinguals differentiate later and for only some words. This study demonstrates that a transition from shared to language-specific naming is a key aspect of later lexical development, but the developmental course differs in detail between monolingual and bilingual children.

Words frequently acquire new senses, but the mental processthat underlies the historical emergence of these senses is oftenopaque. Many have suggested that word meanings develop innon-arbitrary ways, but no attempt has been made to formalizethese proposals and test them against historical data at scale.We propose that word meaning extension should reflect a drivetowards cognitive economy. We test this proposal by exploringa family of computational models that predict the evolution ofword senses, evaluated against a large digitized lexicon thatdates back 1000 years in English language history. Our find-ings suggest that word meanings not only extend in predictableways, but also that they do so following an historical path thattends to minimize cognitive cost - through a process of nearest-neighbor chaining. Our work contributes a formal approach toreverse-engineering mental algorithms of the human lexicon.

Semantic categories in the world's languages often reflect a historical process of chaining: A name for one referent is extended to a conceptually related referent, and from there on to other referents, producing a chain of exemplars that all bear the same name. The beginning and end points of such a chain might in principle be rather dissimilar. There is also evidence supporting a contrasting picture: Languages tend to support efficient, informative communication, often through semantic categories in which all exemplars are similar. Here, we explore this tension through computational analyses of existing cross-language naming and sorting data from the domain of household containers. We find (a) formal evidence for historical semantic chaining, and (b) evidence that systems of categories in this domain nonetheless support near-optimally efficient communication. Our results demonstrate that semantic chaining is compatible with efficient communication, and they suggest that chaining may be constrained by the functional need for efficient communication.

Aims and Objectives: English allows inanimate objects to be sentence subjects (e.g., "The knife cut the bread") but Korean and Japanese restrict subjects of causal sentences on the basis of animacy. In previous work, we found that Korean speakers relaxed their native grammatical animacy constraint when immersed in English (e.g., found knives to be acceptable sentence subjects in Korean). We suggested this L2 influence occurred because the Korean animacy constraint does not map cleanly onto the semantic representation of animacy—some inanimate objects (e.g., "fire") can be subjects of causal sentences. In the current study, we further test this idea by examining the case of Japanese–English bilinguals. We predict that because the Japanese animacy constraint aligns well with the semantic representation of animacy, it will be less susceptible to L2 influence. Methodology: We first independently assessed the semantic representation of animacy by comparing animacy ratings from native speakers of Korean, Japanese, and English for 60 objects. We then asked Japanese–English bilinguals and Japanese monolinguals to provide grammaticality judgments for sentences that varied in subject animacy. Data and Analysis: We analyzed participants' animacy ratings and grammaticality judgments using mixed-effects models. Findings: Animacy ratings supported a closer correspondence between semantic representation of animacy and the grammatical animacy constraint for Japanese grammar than for Korean grammar. In contrast to previous results for Korean speakers, Japanese–English bilinguals' grammaticality judgments did not significantly differ from those of Japanese monolinguals. Originality: The current study is unique in that it suggests the vulnerability of structures at the syntax–semantics interface to L2 influence varies across different language groups based on the alignment between syntactic and semantic features. Implications: The current findings support the possibility that representations at the syntax–semantics interface may only be vulnerable to influence when syntax is incongruent with semantic features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cross-linguistic research has shown that boundaries forlexical categories differ from language to language. The aimof this study is to explore these differences between languagesin relation to the categorization differences within a language.Monolingual Dutch- (N=400) and French-speaking (N=300)Belgian adults provided lexical category judgments for threelexical categories that are roughly equivalent in Dutch andFrench. Each category was represented by good, borderline,and bad examples. A mixture modeling approach enabled usto identify latent groups of categorizers within a language andto evaluate cross-linguistic variation in relation to within-language variation. We found complex patterns of lexicalvariation within as well as between language groups. Evenwithin a seemingly homogeneous group of speakers sharingthe same mother tongue, latent groups of categorizers displaya variability that resembles patterns of lexical variation foundat a cross-linguistic level of comparison.

What forces have shaped the evolution of the lexicon? Lan-guages evolve under the pressure of having to communicatean unbounded set of ideas using a finite set of linguistic struc-tures. This suggests why the transmission of ideas should becompressed such that one word will develop multiple senses.Previous theory also suggests how a word might develop newsenses: Abstract concepts may be construed in terms of moreconcrete concepts. Here, we bring these two perspectives to-gether to examine metaphorical extensions of English wordmeanings over the past millennium, analyzing how sensesfrom a source domain are extended to new ones in a target do-main. Using empirical and computational methods, we foundthat metaphorical mappings are highly systematic and can beexplained in terms of a compact set of variables. Our workshows how metaphor can provide a cognitive device for com-pressing emerging ideas into an existing lexicon.

Storms, Ameel, and Malt [2015. "Development of Cross-language Lexical Influence." "International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism" 18: 529-547] compared the development of naming patterns in monolingual and bilingual children. They concluded that bilinguals' naming patterns in their two languages become increasingly similar with age and are thus converging. In this commentary, we argue that taking into account younger participants' smaller vocabulary and greater variability in names for individual objects changes the paper's conclusions: bilingual naming patterns are found to diverge with age.

Patterns of object naming often differ between languages, butbilingual speakers develop convergent naming patterns intheir two languages that are distinct from those ofmonolingual speakers of each language. This convergenceappears to reflect dynamic interactions between lexicalrepresentations for the two languages. In this study, wepresent a self-organizing neural network model to simulatesemantic convergence in the bilingual lexicon and investigatemechanisms underlying semantic convergence. Our resultsdemonstrate that connections between two languages can beestablished through the simultaneous activations of relatedwords in both languages, and these connections between twolanguages pull the two lexicons toward each other. Theseresults suggest that connections between words in thebilingual lexicon play a major role in bilinguals’ semanticconvergence. The model provides a foundation for exploringhow various input variables will affect bilingual patterns ofoutput.

Semantic categories in the world’s languages often reflect ahistorical process of chaining: A name for one idea is extendedto a conceptually related idea, and from there on to other ideas,producing a chain of concepts that all bear the same name.The beginning and end points of such a chain might in prin-ciple be conceptually rather dissimilar. There is also evidencesupporting a contrasting picture: Languages tend to supportefficient, informative communication, often through semanticcategories in which all exemplars are similar. Here, we explorethis tension through computational analyses of existing cross-language naming and sorting data from the domain of house-hold containers. We find: (1) formal evidence for historical se-mantic chaining, and (2) evidence that systems of categories inthis domain nonetheless support near-optimally efficient com-munication. Our results suggest that semantic chaining maybe constrained by the functional need for efficient, informativecommunication.

Semantic categories in the world's languages often reflect a historical process of "chaining": A name for one referent is extended to a conceptually related referent, and from there on to other referents, producing a chain of exemplars that all bear the same name. The beginning and end points of such a chain might in principle be rather dissimilar. There is also evidence supporting a contrasting picture: Languages tend to support efficient, informative communication, often through semantic categories in which all exemplars are similar. Here, we explore this tension through computational analyses of existing cross-language naming and sorting data from the domain of household containers. We find (a) formal evidence for historical semantic chaining, and (b) evidence that systems of categories in this domain nonetheless support near-optimally efficient communication. Our results demonstrate that semantic chaining is compatible with efficient communication, and they suggest that chaining may be constrained by the functional need for efficient communication.

Much has been said about children's strategies for mapping elements of meaning to words in toddlerhood. However, children continue to refine word meanings and patterns of word use into middle childhood and beyond, even for common words appearing in early vocabulary. We address where children past toddlerhood diverge from adults and where they more closely approximate them, and why. In two studies, we examined naming of locomotion (walking, running, hopping, etc.) by children aged four to nine and compared their patterns of word use to adult patterns. We evaluated whether the children are sensitive to the biomechanical discontinuity between pendulum-type and impact-and-recoil-type actions that constrains adult word use. We also evaluated whether they appreciate this constraint by age four or only develop appreciation later. Children from four onward were sensitive to the biomechanical distinction in their word use. Perceived domain structure plays a role in explaining later lexical development.

Bilinguals are often not fully monolingual-like in either language. With respect to the lexicon, recent research demonstrates that their naming patterns for common household objects tend to converge on a common pattern for the two languages. The present study investigates the developmental trajectory of naming of common household objects in Dutch/French bilingual and monolingual children. First, we investigated whether bilingual word diversity for a set of household objects is limited by the demands of learning two languages. We found that children lag behind monolingual controls in terms of vocabulary at young ages, but that they catch up later, ending with as diverse a set of names in each language as the monolinguals. Second, we investigated how the convergence in the adult bilingual lexicon manifests itself over the course of development. We found that naming patterns converge with age following a similarity-driven strategy, a pattern also seen for the monolinguals. However, language-specific exceptions to the similarity principle are acknowledged from age 10 onward by monolinguals, but only from age 14 onward in bilinguals. At all ages, bilinguals show more convergence than monolinguals, and the difference is largest for adults. Together our results indicate that acquisition of naming patterns by bilinguals starts off more or less following the early stages of monolinguals, with separate naming patterns in the two languages, but convergence dominates the later developmental path to a larger extent for bilinguals than for monolinguals.

We distinguish two forms of categorization: recognizing objects and choosing a name for them. Understanding the relation between similarity -- which we take to underlie recognition -- and naming is therefore fundamental. Two sources of complexity in naming are described that distinguish recognition from naming. We distinguish the taslcs empirically by comparing linguistic category boundaries and perceived similarity for speakers of Chinese and English for sixty common containers. Although the two groups have different linguistic catgegory boundaries, their similarity judgments are largely convergent.

Threats to the health of our environment are numerous. Much research in science and engineering is devoted to documenting, understanding, and attempting to mitigate the harm itself. The root challenge for sustainability, however, is human behavior. As such, changes to human behaviors and the internal processes that drive them are also essential. Critical to understanding sustainability‐related behaviors is the individual's conceptualization of the natural world and its components and processes. The papers in this topiCS issue address these conceptualizations by drawing from anthropological, linguistic, educational, philosophical, and social cognitive perspectives as well as traditional psychological approaches to the study of concepts and their development in children. They engage with many domains bearing on environmental sustainability including climate change, biodiversity, land and water conservation, resource use, and design of the built environment. They coalesce around four broad themes: (a) What people know (or believe) about nature broadly and about specific aspects of nature, and how they acquire and use this knowledge; (b) how knowledge is expressed and shared via language; (c) how knowledge and beliefs interact with affective, social, and motivational influences to yield attitudes and behaviors; and (d) how members of different cultures and speakers of different languages differ in these ways. The papers also point to lessons for advancing sustainability via public policy and public messaging, education, conservation and nature management, and design of the built environment. The root challenge for environmental sustainability is human behavior. Critical to understanding sustainability‐related behaviors is the individual's conceptualization of the natural world and its components and processes. The papers in this issue address these conceptualizations by drawing from anthropological, linguistic, educational, philosophical, and social cognitive perspectives as well as traditional psychological approaches to the study of concepts and their development in children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Usage patterns for common nouns continue to change well past the early years of language acquisition in free naming (Andersen, 1975; Ameel, Malt, & Storms, 2008). The current research evaluates whether this continued evolution is shown in receptive judgments as well, given their differing cognitive demands. We found an extended learning trajectory for children aged 7-13 years old. In contrast to the over- and underextensions found in Ameel et al.'s free-naming task, however, only overextensions were found. Children's lexical categories showed initial overlap, but with age the overlap gradually disappeared and the categories became more distinct. The cognitive demands of production influence the particular deviations from adult usage that appear in free naming, but even for receptive competence, acquiring full adult word knowledge and the ability to use it in different ways is a lengthy process that requires acquisition and consolidation of knowledge at multiple levels.

We examined first language (L1) naming of common household objects in three groups of Russian-English bilinguals: early, childhood and late bilinguals. Their naming patterns were compared with those of native speakers of Russian and English, in order to detect possible second language (L2) English influence on L1 Russian naming patterns. We investigated whether such influence is modulated by the speaker's linguistic trajectory, specifically, their age of arrival in the L2 environment, which in turn influences their relative proficiency and dominance in the two languages. We also examined whether the potential for L2 shifts can be linked to specific characteristics of the categories in the L1 or L2. L2 influence was evident in the data, increasing with earlier age of arrival but most pronounced with lowest L1 proficiency. The changes entailed both narrowing and broadening of linguistic categories. These findings indicate that L1 word use is susceptible to L2 influence even for concrete nouns referring to familiar objects, and the nature of the shift for a given word appears to be driven by several factors.

Bilinguals' lexical mappings for their two languages have been found to converge toward a common naming pattern. The present paper investigates in more detail how semantic convergence is manifested in bilingual lexical knowledge. We examined how semantic convergence affects the centers and boundaries of lexical categories for common household objects for Dutch-French bilinguals. We found evidence for converging category centers for bilinguals: (1) correlations were higher between their typicality ratings for roughly corresponding categories in the two languages than between typicality ratings of monolinguals in each language, and (2) in a geometrical representation, category centers derived from their naming data in the two languages were situated closer to each other than were the corresponding monolingual category centers. We also found evidence for less complex category boundaries for bilinguals: (1) bilinguals needed fewer dimensions than monolinguals to separate their categories linearly and (2) fewer violations of similarity-based naming were observed for bilinguals than for monolinguals. Implications for theories of the bilingual lexicon are discussed. (Contains 8 figures and 1 table.)

Classifier languages are spoken by a large portion of the world's population, but psychologists have only recently begun to investigate the psychological reality of classifier categories and their potential for influencing non-linguistic thought. The current work evaluates both the mental representation of classifiers and potential cognitive consequences for speakers of Mandarin Chinese. We first provide a taxonomy of 126 common classifiers and a large sample of the objects classified by each as a tool for this and future research. We then present four studies investigating potential variation in the mental representation of the classifier categories. The data provide evidence that at least three forms of mental representation need to be distinguished. Finally, we present a fifth study investigating the impact of this variation on the cognitive consequences of classifier knowledge. This study suggests that the differences identified in Experiments 1-4 have important implications for the likelihood of finding cognitive consequences. (Contains 10 tables.)

Daily experience is filled with objects that have been created by humans to serve specific purposes. For such objects, the very act of creation may be a key element of how people understand them. But exactly how does creator's intention matter? We evaluated its contribution to two forms of categorization: the name selected for an artifact, and intuitions about what an artifact "really" is. To contrast the possibility that intention serves as an essence (Bloom, P. (1996). "Intention, history, and artifact concepts." "Cognition," 60, 1-29; Bloom, P. (1998). "Theories of artifact categorization." "Cognition," 66, 87-93.) determining an artifact's name with the possibility that it matters through its relevance to discourse goals, participants in three experiments read scenarios about people interacting with an artifact and then judged the suitability of different names for it. The intention of the creator was of differing degrees of relevance to the communication, and the relevance of other aspects of the entity varied in a complementary fashion. We found that name selection was altered by the communicative goals of a situation, and name choice was most consistent with creator's intention when the situation made intention relevant to achieving those goals. In a fourth experiment, we used the same scenarios to test the possibility that intention serves as an essence determining intuitions about what an object "really" is. The impact of creator's intention was modulated by the discourse context. These findings suggest that creator's intention influences both name choice and intuitions about what something "really" is by virtue of its impact on how communicative goals are best realized.

Asked second language learners to name household objects in English and in their native language, to judge objects' typicality with respect to English names, and to provide naming strategy reports. Least experienced learners' naming and typicality judgments diverged substantially from native responses. More experienced learners improved, but even some retained discrepancies from native patterns. (Author/VWL)

Evaluates three theories of categorization in the domain of artifacts. Two are versions of psychological essentialism, positing that artifact categorization is a matter of judging membership in a kind by appealing to a belief about the underlying nature of the object. The third is called "minimalism," and it states that judgments of kind membership are based on beliefs about causal laws, not beliefs about excesses. (Author/VWL)

Examined whether different lexicalization patterns of motion events in English and Spanish predicted how college student speakers performed in recognition memory and similarity judgment tasks. Found no language effect in recognition memory after either linguistic or non-linguistic encoding, nor in similarity judgments after non-linguistic encoding. The linguistic effect after verbal encoding on similarity judgments conformed to language-specific patterns. (Author/KB)

Second language (L2) learners may have a “semantic accent,” using L2 words differently from a native speaker. The current studies investigate how learning conditions and the need to use different semantic dimensions may constrain the acquisition of L2 meanings.In Experiment 1, we asked whether first language (L1) Mandarin speakers would successfully learn English carry and hold with intensive input in a laboratory training procedure. In Experiment 2, we asked whether the difficulties observed were due to differing semantic dimensions per se or to the need to move from a larger number of fine-grained native distinctions to a smaller number of broader English meanings.Word definitions and label choice after training were scored for consistency with native performance.Experiment 1 supported the idea that intensive input helps, but Experiment 2 suggested that any kind of semantic difference from L1 is challenging even with intensive input.The current study clarifies the contributions of learning conditions and L1-L2 semantic differences in semantic accent.Reducing semantic accent may require instruction in specific L1-L2 differences and cultivation of metacognitive sensitivity to the potential for differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]