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Poster D in Poster Session D: Wednesday, August 5, 2:00 – 3:45 pm, Kimmel Center, Shorin & Rosenthal Rooms

Language Experience Reshapes Conceptual Boundaries

Maya Taliaferro¹, Aditi Singh¹, Grace W Lindsay¹, Esti Blanco-Elorrieta¹; ¹New York University

Presenter: Maya Taliaferro

Language structures the world into semantic categories that support memory, generalization, and communication. However, semantic categories are not always isomorphic across languages; how bilinguals resolve these cross-linguistic differences remains unclear. This study adopts a controlled, feature-based approach using parametrically manipulated object continua to examine cross-linguistic categorization. English monolinguals, Mandarin monolinguals, and Mandarin-English bilinguals completed a two-alternative forced choice task to test whether bilinguals follow monolingual norms in each language or show an integrated categorization system across languages. While monolingual groups exhibited distinct category boundaries, bilinguals’ categorization did not vary by language—suggesting an integrated categorization system shaped by language exposure. We then trained a neural network model to learn category boundaries under varying language exposure. This model revealed that categorization differences arise from changes in perceptual feature weights. Together, these results suggest that bilinguals’ experiences give rise to a shared conceptual system determined by the combined statistical structure of multiple languages.

Topic Area: Memory, Learning & Knowledge Structures