Lewis, Zettersten, & Lupyan (in press, PNAS )
A. Pairwise correlations (Fisher transformed as in 1) between language-derived animal similarities (cosine distances) and evolutionary distances (yellow), performance of sighted (red) and blind (blue) participants. Human comparisons are shown separately for shape, skin texture, and color card-sorting tasks in (1). B. Language statistics classify animals as having scales, skin, fur, or feathers at levels well-above chance. Predictive accuracy is shown for ground truth (yellow) and performance of sighted (red) and blind (blue) participants. C. Relationships among animals computed entirely from language statistics show considerable overlap with relationships derived from shape-based categorization produced by sighted (left) and blind (right) participants. The labels in the two language-based dendrograms are ordered to maximize alignment with behavioral data. Single asterisks indicate p < .05; Double asterisks indicate p < .01.
Supplementary Material