title: Learning to remember by learning to speak.
abstract: Does the language we speak affect the way we think, and if so, how? Previous researchers have considered this question by exploring the cognitive abilities of speakers of different languages. In the present study, we looked for evidence of linguistic relativity within a language and within participants by looking at memory recall for monolingual children ages 3-5 years old. At this age, children use grammatical markers with variable fluency depending on ease of articulation: Children produce the correct plural more often for vowel-final words (e.g., shoes) than plosive-final words (e.g., socks) and for plosive-final words more often than sibilant-final words (e.g., dresses). We examined whether these phonological principles governing plural production also influence children's recall of the plurality of seen objects. Fifty children were shown pictures of familiar objects presented as either singular or multiple instances. After a break, they were required to indicate whether they saw the singular- or multiple-instance version of each picture. Results show that children's memory for object plurality does depend on the phonology of the word. Subsequent tests of each child's production ability showed a correlation between a child's memory and his or her ability to articulate novel plurals with the same phonological properties. That is, what children can say impacts what they can remember.
authors.affiliation: Research Service, Veterans Affairs Northern California Health Care System.
authors.forename: Marc
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ettlinger
authors.affiliation: Department of Human Development and Psychology, University of Wisconsin.
authors.forename: Jennifer
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Lanter
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Houston.
authors.forename: Craig K
authors.initials: CK
authors.lastname: Van Pay
mesh_terms: D002675:Child, Preschool; D002755:Choice Behavior; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007804:Language Development; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology*; D010700:Phonetics; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D017603:Signal Detection, Psychological; D013060:Speech / Q000502:physiology*; D013223:Statistics as Topic; D014706:Verbal Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D014825:Vocabulary