Date of Award

Spring 6-2-2026

Document Type

Thesis (Undergraduate)

Department

Cognitive Science

First Advisor

Samantha Wray

Abstract

What happens to cognition when you disrupt language? What does language actually do as a representational medium for cognition? Much literature shows a facilitative role of language on categorical thinking. This work specifically examines the role of language in category learning using a verbal interference paradigm. I ran two experiments where participants learned to distinguish between two novel categories of bugs while under conditions of verbal or visuospatial interference. In Experiment 1, category membership was determined by an XOR rule; in Experiment 2, category membership was determined by an AND rule.

In Experiment 1, participants on average did not succeed in acquiring the categories. In Experiment 2, participants under the verbal interference condition had similar accuracies but faster reaction times compared to participants under the visuospatial interference condition. Taken together, the results suggest that the relationship between language and categorical thinking is not as simple as language facilitates categorical thinking. It is important to consider other factors such as category structure and the emergent properties of dual-task paradigms.

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