In a study, researchers showed Russian and English speakers a series of color chips ranging from light blue to dark blue. Russian has separate basic words for light blue ("goluboy") and dark blue ("siniy"), whereas English uses "blue" for both. Russian speakers were significantly faster than English speakers at distinguishing color chips that crossed the goluboy/siniy boundary, even though physical color differences were equivalent across pairs.
These results most directly support which hypothesis?
- A
Skinner's behaviorist account of language learning
- Bcheck_circle
The linguistic relativity (Whorfian) hypothesis: language influences thought and perception
- C
Chomsky's universal grammar hypothesis
- D
The critical period hypothesis for language acquisition
Explanation
Whorf's linguistic relativity hypothesis proposes that the structure of one's language influences cognitive processes, including perception. Faster discrimination of categories that have separate words supports this idea.