Frontiers in Psychology (Sep 2016)
Performance of language-coordinated collective systems: A study of wine recognition and description
Abstract
Most of our perceptions of and engagements with the world are shaped by our immersion in socialinteractions, cultural traditions, tools and linguistic categories. In this study we experimentallyinvestigate the impact of two types of language-based coordination on the recognition anddescription of complex sensory stimuli: that of red wine. Participants were asked to taste,remember and successively recognize samples of wines within a larger set in a two-by-twoexperimental design: 1) either individually or in pairs, and 2) with or without the support of asommelier card – a cultural linguistic tool designed for wine description. Both effectiveness ofrecognition and the kinds of errors in the four conditions were analyzed. While our experimentalmanipulations did not impact recognition accuracy, bias-variance decomposition of error revealsnon-trivial differences in how participants solved the task. Pairs generally displayed reduced biasand increased variance compared to individuals, however the variance dropped significantly whenthey used the sommelier card. The effect of card reducing the variance was observed only inpairs, individuals did not seem to benefit from the cultural linguistic tool. Subsequent analysis ofdescriptions generated with the aid of card by individuals and pairs showed that they were moreconsistent and discriminative in the case of pairs. The findings are discussed in terms of globalproperties and dynamics of collective systems when constrained by different types of culturalpractices.
Keywords
