PSYC2400 Biological Psychology

Introduction

At any given time, our visual systems input a large amount of information that exceeds the brain's capacity to integrate into conscious experiences. As a result, our brains shift to selective attention and filtering only to process the necessary information.  One aspect observed to cause a shift in one’s attention to essential concepts is language. For instance, processing words such as up and down usually tend to shift our attention to the compatible locations. Similarly, embodied language models tend to show interactions between language and other cognitive aspects such as perception, attention, and action. Various studies have illustrated how activating the meaning of a word is likely to shift visual attention to space.

For instance, Chasteen et al. (2010) observed that religious words such as God shifted attention upwards while devil-related words shifted attention downwards. Another study by Dudschig et al. (2013) shows the existence of interactions between language and action.  In the study, the participants responded by shifting their eyes to a target in an upward or downward position for word and non-words and vice versa. The words used were actual world words with a specific location, for instance, sun. The study discovered that eye movements were faster incompatible situations, that is, when the target was consistent with the natural world referent word.

 The embodied cognition theory plays an essential role in elaborating conceptual cueing. Since most features of cognition depend on the characteristics of the physical body of an agent, the cognitive processing of an agent extends beyond the brain's capacity. The agent’s biological factors play both constitutive and causal roles in cognition. Through the body acting as a regulator, the body ensures coordination of cognitive activities over a particular space and time. Various scholars have discovered interactions between our mental processes and our external environments. For instance, according to Goodhew et al. (2015), the proximity of an observer's hand affects the visual awareness of an object.

Scholars in this field have invested in illustrating how language plays an essential role in attention. However, none of the studies has been done to determine whether an individual’s first or second language has any conceptual cueing effects. Most studies have focused on a single language to establish the abstract cueing effect. In this study, we aim to address this gap by involving two groups with English as the first and second languages in the second group.  We aim to determine whether conceptual cueing effects can be observed on one’s first and second language.  Based on the literature, language plays a vital role in diverting attention to explaining the conceptual cueing effect. The researcher hypothesizes that both groups will experience an abstract cueing effect.

Participants

The study involved a total of 228 participants who were divided into two groups. The first group (L1) included participants who identified English as their first language.  The total number of participants in this group was 191. The mean age for participants in this group was 23.86 years. In the second group, there was a total of 37 participants with an average mean age of 25.18 years.

Stimuli

For this study, participants were required to access the pavlova website using their devices. The experiment was programmed using Psychopy. The stimuli used were either word or non-word and were written in white and presented on a black background. The white and black color was chosen to ensure the target could easily be spotted and ensure color-blind participants did not have a hard time differentiating shades. The word stimuli used were ground, hat boots, and sky. The non-words stimuli were CID and PYKLW. The terms were presented in size 12 Ariel font.

The fixation cross was situated at 5% of the participants' monitor. The participants were to press SPACE on the keyboard when the target appeared on word trials. The target was a square between the middle and top or middle and bottom of the screen and was 2.5% of the participant's monitor. The stimuli appeared at between 800ms and 1000ms before the target appears. This was to ensure participants had enough time to process the words. In the study, we incorporated both word and non-word stimuli to ensure participants read the motivations to provide the attention was indeed shifted from reading the words.  The stimuli were not displayed for a shorter time (100ms). This would not allow enough time for participants to read the comments and not for a longer time (five spends) to ensure participants do not move their spotlight back to fixation.

Procedure

Before the study began, the participants were given a link to the consent form and the study website. The participants were issued written task instructions and were to engage in eight blocks of practice trials. During the experiment, the participants were first required to fill out their age, gender, handedness, and language status.  The study took a total of between 5 and 7 minutes, with a break halfway through the survey. Each participant was to complete a block of two trials. The study involved ninety trials in total, and the trials were randomly intermixed. The trials were randomly intermixed to avoid any biases. Without randomly integrating, participants would have considered paying attention to the upper part of the screen while ignoring the words. The practice trials were necessary as they ensured participants participated in what.  The break was required halfway through the study to ensure participants were not exhausted, thereby providing variable results.

Independent variable

In the study, the independent variables were,

Trial compatibility, which was done within subjects. Both groups of participants were exposed to both compatible and incompatible trials.

Language status. The language status was tested between each subject.

The dependent variables were the accuracy and reaction times by the participants.

Results

The data were analyzed using IBM SPSS version 26. At the onset of the study, there were a total of 245 participants. To ensure the validity of the results, the data were subjected to cleaning. First, the researcher wanted to ensure the accuracy of the neutral trials. To determine the accuracy, we determined whether the participants correctly withheld responses in non-word stimuli. High accuracy for non-word stimuli was an indication the participants were reading both the word and non-word stimuli.

In contrast, a lower accuracy was an indication they were not reading the inspirations. Participants who had pressed SPACE in 30% of the non-word stimuli were excluded from the study. In this stage, we excluded four participants. The second stage of cleaning was to determine the accuracy of both compatible and non-compatible trials. The level of accuracy was an indication of engagement in the tests, while a lower accuracy indicated a lack of concentration. In this stage, all participants had an accuracy of above 70%, and so no one was excluded. In the final step, a total of 13 data sets were banned for being outliers. Outliers can influence the outcome, and so they were excluded. A total of 228 participants were left in the study (L1 was 191 while l2 was 37).

Descriptive statistics

The mean reaction time for incompatible trials is 0.36659 (SD =.078878). The mean reaction time for compatible tests is 0.36195 (SD=.078927). At the same time, the mean for compatible trial accuracy is 98.8196 (SD =2.12977). The average incompatible trial accuracy is98.6728 (SD=2.61318). Lastly, the average neutral trial accuracy is 97.2770 (SD=3.02954).

For L2 (second language English)

In the second language, the mean reaction time for incompatible trials is 0.37373 (SD= .081255). The average reaction time for compatible tests is 0.36889 (SD=. 080993). The mean Compatible trial accuracy is 98.3541 (SD= 3.10972). The mean incompatible trial accuracy is 99.1432 (SD=2.06028). Finally, the mean neutral trial accuracy (M=97.4486, SD 3.76811)

Inferential statistics

The two-tailed paired sample t-test was used to test the hypothesis. The assumption employed to the use of the test was that the variable in consideration was normally distributed. Secondly, the dependent variable was continuous and had no outliers. The results in figure 1 reveal that the reaction time for L1 English speakers was statistically significant, t(190)=-1.995, p=0.047. Therefore, it is concluded that the participants in LI English speakers had a faster reaction time for compatibility than incompatible trials at a 0.05 level of significance.

We are considering the L2 English speakers. The calculated p-value is 0.284 greater than the significance level α=0.05. There is no significant difference between the reaction time of compatible and incompatible trials for participants in this group from these statistics. For this reason, we reject the null hypothesis and conclude that L2 did not experience any conceptual cueing effects.

The study aimed to determine whether first or second language has any impact on the conceptual cueing effect. Previously researchers have illustrated that language plays an essential role in the direction of visual attention. However, no studies have compared the abstract cueing effect on an individual’s first and second language. From our research, participants who reported English as their first language demonstrated a conceptual cueing effect (t (190) =-1.995, p=0.047), while those in L2 did not show any abstract cueing effect (t (36) =-1.995, p=0.284).  

Our findings reject the null hypothesis since only L1 experienced a conceptual cueing effect.  Humans are known to represent concepts spatially. Like in our study, the L1 had a quick response time for compatibility compared to incompatible trials. Words like hat and sky shifted their attention towards the top of the screen and ground and boots to eth bottom of the screen. Our results are similar to those of Chasteen et al. (2010). In his study, he noted that the participants could easily detect targets that appeared in spatially compatible areas corresponding to divine concepts. For instance, God-related words were easily seen when they appeared on the rightward and upward section of the screen, and devil-related words appeared in the left and downward section of the screen.  However, our study differs from that of Chasteen in that, whereas our study has two groups, Chasteen's study only involved a single group.

According to Foroni et al. (2015), aimed at measuring muscle activation of smiling muscles, the study discovered that L2 only showed activation of the facial muscles for affirmative statements and not for negative comments. From the findings, Foroni concluded that second language only partially activates the sensorimotor in the brain. These findings can explain why the participants in L2 did not respond faster to compatible trials than their L1 counterparts due to slower activation of the visual systems by the brain. Another study by Dudschig et al. (2013), determining the relationship between saccadic eye movement and words relating to real-world entities such as sun, stone, and bird, discovered similar results as our current study. Dudschig study found that a total of 78 words resulted in a facilitated eye movement to a location compatible with the referential place of the word in the world. For instance, the word shoes directed eye movement to the ground. These results explain why the response was higher for compatible trials for both L1 and L2 than incompatible practices.

The results of these findings can be best explained through embodied cognition. Our conceptual knowledge does not only depend on the sensory and motor areas in the brain.  Our environment also plays an essential role in creating concepts in our brains. The spatial metaphors assigned to different ideas can influence our behavior. When these spatial metaphors are stored in the brain, they can affect our response to concepts. From all these studies, we see attention shifts largely depending on metaphorical spatial representations. In one's first language, processing concepts is associated with activation of the visual processing areas via attention and receptive field shifting. The association is most likely due to the connection between the prefrontal cortex and the posterior parietal cortex (Chasteen et al., 2010). However, there seems to be no clear association between concept p[recessing and activation of the visual systems in the lower and upper visual fields in the second language. From these results, we can conclude that language embodiment is only restricted to one’s first language explaining the lack of conceptual cueing effect for the second language.

Limitations of the study

The sample size for the L2 was smaller compared to L1. As a result of the small sample size, the results cannot accurately represent the occurrence.

The study did not clarify whether the L2 was still learning English or whether they were well conversant with the language.

Finally, the length of the words was not equal. L2 would have found it hard to read longer terms, especially if they were not conversant with the English language.

Conclusion

The principal finding of this study is that conceptual processing in one’s first and second language differs significantly. This finding is crucial as it provides further insights into the understanding of embodied cogitation. The study also has some limitations that have been addressed as well. Future studies can focus on understanding why conceptual knowledge is processed differently in one's first and second language.

References

Chasteen, A. L., Burdzy, D. C., & Pratt, J. (2010). Thinking of God moves attention. Neuropsychologia, 48(2), 627-630.

Dudschig, C., Souman, J., Lachmair, M., de la Vega, I., & Kaup, B. (2013). Reading “sun” and looking up: The influence of language on saccadic eye movements in the vertical dimension. PloS one, 8(2), e56872.

Goodhew, S. C., Edwards, M., Ferber, S., & Pratt, J. (2015). Altered visual perception near the hands: A critical review of attentional and neurophysiological models. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 55, 223-233.

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