Monolinguals' and Bilinguals' Use of Language in Forming Novel Object Categories

Monolinguals and bilinguals differ along a number of dimensions, including way they label existing object categories (Pavlenko & Malt, 2011). In the present study, we ask whether English monolinguals, Spanish-English bilinguals, and English-Spanish bilinguals also differ in the way they use language when forming novel categories. Previous research with monolinguals shows that a shared label encourages children (e.g., Waxman & Markow, 1995) and adults (e.g., Lupyan, Rakison, & McClelland, 2007) to place objects together. Our results further demonstrate that when two objects shared a Licit Word label like “zeg,” monolinguals and bilinguals alike are encouraged to group them together. Illicit Words like “gxz,” on the other hand, only influence the categorization decisions of bilinguals. Thus, bilinguals appear to be more flexible in their use of linguistic information in categorization. Neither group made use of non-linguistic cues (patterned frames), suggesting a unique role for language in category formation.