How language affects perception : a study of bilingual’s perception across domains

Abstract

Past studies exploring if bilinguals have different perceptions of the same objects while operating in different languages were typically conducted in the domain of colour. These studies usually analyse results by comparing bilingual participants’ performance with monolingual participants’ performance. This study investigated if there were perceptual differences among English-Chinese bilinguals in not just the domain of colour but also the domain of shape. This study also focused on comparing bilinguals’ result in the English tasks versus Chinese tasks instead of comparing against the result of monolingual English and Chinese participants. Analysis with participants’ language dominance was also conducted to determine if language dominance influenced the perception of language differences. Overall, results of this study did indicate a language difference within bilinguals for the domain of Colour, for the colour names ‘红色’ versus ‘Red’. Influence of language dominance was also found in the domain of Shape, where English-dominant bilinguals showed more significant differences than Chinese-dominant or Balanced bilinguals. The findings of this study were also used to discuss the view of Linguistic Relativity, whether language does influence the thinking patterns of individuals.