Is It Language or Is It Culture? Re-examining Cross-Cultural Similarity Judgments Using Lexical Co-Occurrence

<a href="https://embed.stanford.edu/iframe/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpurl.stanford.edu%2Fkg784gg3693" class="su-underline">Show Content</a>

Abstract/Contents

Abstract: Is “cow” more closely related to “grass” or “chicken”? Speakers of different languages judge similarity in this context differently, but why? One possibility is that cultures co-varying with these languages induce variation in conceptualizations of similarity. Specifically, East Asian cultures may promote reasoning about thematic similarity, by which cow and grass are more related whereas Western cultures may bias similarity judgments toward taxonomic relations, like cow-chicken. This difference in notions of similarity is the consensus interpretation for cross-cultural variation in this paradigm. We consider, and provide evidence for, an alternative possibility, by which notions of similarity are equivalent across contexts, but the statistics of the environment vary. On this account, similarity judgments are guided by co-occurrence in experience, and observing or hearing about cows and grass or cows and chickens more often could induce preferences for the relevant grouping and account for apparent differences in notions of similarity across contexts.

Type of resource	text
Date created	June 4, 2021

Author	Khuyen, Le
Degree granting institution	Stanford University, Symbolic Systems Program
Primary advisor	Frank, Michael
Advisor	Carstensen, Alex

Location	https://purl.stanford.edu/kg784gg3693

Use and reproduction: User agrees that, where applicable, content will not be used to identify or to otherwise infringe the privacy or confidentiality rights of individuals. Content distributed via the Stanford Digital Repository may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor.
License: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).

Preferred Citation: Khuyen, Le and Frank, Michael and Carstensen, Alex. (2021). Is It Language or Is It Culture? Re-examining Cross-Cultural Similarity Judgments Using Lexical Co-Occurrence. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: https://purl.stanford.edu/kg784gg3693

Undergraduate Honors Theses, Symbolic Systems Program, Stanford University

Loading usage metrics...