Our study showcases the value of field-based research in understanding diapause as a potentially vulnerable or robust stage in an insect’s life history.Lab-based studies that monitor bumblebee vital rates under controlled conditions will remain foundational in the effort to identify the environmental factors which impact diapause survival. However, lab-based studies cannot capture the real-world environmental pressures faced by diapausing insects, and lab-reared colonies cannot replicate the adaptive capacity of wild colonies to cope with these pressures. In demonstrating the utility of B. impatiens as a model system for exploring insect overwintering ecology, we are hopeful that our research will pave the way for future field-based studies targeting this life cycle stage.Our cultural context shapes our interactions with the world and dictates the way we visualize, process, and utilize information. For example, holistic and analytic modes of thought differs across cultures , with people from East Asian, collectivistic cultures typically exhibiting holistic thought and people from Western, individualistic cultures exhibiting analytic thought . Holistic thought associated with an East Asian perspective is primarily dictated by context and relational cues. In this style of thinking, people are more likely to attend to background information and relationships, viewing the system as a whole rather than a sum of its parts . For example, in the classic narrative task, participants view an image of a fish bowl and describe what they see in as much detail as possible for one minute . Holistic thinkers, in this task, are more likely to name background or environmental objects like “under the water.” Analytic thought, in comparison,black flower bucket is characterized by attention to foreground information and discriminating/categorical qualities .
In the narrative task, analytic thinkers are therefore more likely to name foreground objects like “fish” and describe their properties and movements. Previous research has predominantly focused on collectivist and individualist cultural differences in different thinking styles, and factors that could explain the culturally bounded phenomenon . For instance, researchers have examined the role that environment plays in perception, exposing participants to images of cityscapes . These researchers found that images of Japanese cities were more ambiguous and contained more elements than images in American scenes, presumably priming participants to attend more carefully to context. Indeed, when primed with images of a Japanese city, both American and Japanese participants were more likely to think holistically. In addition to environmental differences, language might also play a role. For instance, in one study, researchers examined whether thinking styles influence attention and awareness. To test this, participants were shown the classic fish bowl vignette, and researchers used an eye-tracking device to measure eye fixation patterns. East Asian and Western participants showed non-significant differences in looking patterns . However, the emergence of holistic and analytic thoughts occurred when participants were asked to describe the scene, where East Asian participants were more likely to name background and environmental information than Westerners did. Since differences were only observed when participants were asked to describe the image, researchers suggested language as a mechanism for divergent thinking styles. Language differences could explain sub-cultural differences as well. Two studies found differences even between two collectivist cultures. Korean participants thought more holistically than Chinese participants did when presented with the narrative task. Researchers proposed that these varying degrees of holistic thinking might be related to the syntactic differences in the participants’ native languages, noting that English sentences were mostly head-initial and Korean were mostly head-final.
This “head-initial/head final” judgment refers to verb/noun positioning, with head initial language leading with the noun followed by the verb, and head-final language leading with the verb followed by the noun. This hypothesis suggests a primacy effect, with speakers being drawn to whatever aspect of the sentence is placed first. English, therefore, as a head-initial language, would mention the subject first in a sentence, priming its speakers to attend to focal objects, whereas Korean, as a head-final language, would mention the subject last in a sentence, priming its speakers to attend to context and the relationship between objects. Since Chinese alternates between head-initial and head-final languages, Chinese speakers showed a lesser degree of holistic thinking than Korean speakers. Results from other studies support the idea that language properties could associate with the measured thinking styles across individuals, situations, cultures, and even subgroups within the same culture . So far, the literature has suggested thinking styles as a static characteristic of members of a culture, and unique features of language could foster a certain type of thinking style over a long-term exposure. Little is known how language could potentially influence thinking styles as a contextual factor from moment to moment. For example, studies have used tasks with categorical or relational associations of concepts to measure holistic and analytic thinking styles. One influential study constructed triads with both a categorical and relational choice. Participants were asked to choose the two words that were most closely related . If the participant grouped policeman and postman, this would be categorical, indicating an analytic choice, whereas policeman or postman grouped with uniform would be relational, indicating a holistic choice . However, ample studies have shown that the strength of categorical and relational associations can vary across pictorial and verbal formats . In general, pictorial stimuli yield a stronger categorical association based on semantic feature overlaps, whereas verbal stimuli yield stronger relational associations based on word associations. Consequently, the verbal triad could “benefit” relational associations more whereas the pictorial triad could “benefit” categorical associations. Therefore, it is possible that the measured thinking style could be dependent on the format of the triad task. Furthermore, categorical associations could be manifested in the verbal labels of object names. For example, some semantic categories are emphasized in their names, such as “berry ” and “nut ”.
Having these verbal labels in object names could potentially emphasize the categorical associations of concepts, influencing the thinking styles in different ways. On the one hand, since the categorical association is related to analytic thinking in the triad task, highlighting the categorical information could lead to more analytic thinking . On the other hand, highlighting the categorical information via verbal labels of object names could potentially promote a focus on similarities of objects, a feature of the holistic thinking style . Anecdotal evidence is in alignment with this argument. Specifically, this feature is extremely pervasive in some Asian languages, such as Mandarin Chinese, but not so much in Western languages such as English. Chinese names of objects commonly include the category label alongside the noun, such as the verbal label “flower ” in “rose-flower ”, “daisy-flower ”, and “peony-flower ”. Potentially, having this language feature in Mandarin Chinese promotes a focus on overall similarities of objects, fostering holistic thought in Chinese speakers. The overarching goal of this study is to examine how language might impact thinking styles, by using verbal labels to create different contexts when measuring people’s thinking styles. Study 1 sought to examine whether thinking styles measured in a classic triad task could be shifted using verbal labels instead of pictures. Given the evidence that relational associations are stronger in verbal format,square black flower bucket we anticipated that people would show more holistic thinking when tested with verbal format in comparison to pictorial format. Study 2 aimed to examine whether participants could shift their thinking styles measured by the verbal triad task, after being verbally primed to focus on categorical associations of objects. Two potential outcomes were predicted according to two competing hypotheses . If the effect of verbal labels is direct , we would expect that the categorical labels in object names would make people focus on the categorical associations of words, and choose categorical associations more . However, if the effect of verbal labels is indirect, we would anticipate that exposure to these category labels in object names could make people focus on the overall similarities of objects, and they would show a shift to holistic thinking and choose more relational associations. In addition, we explored potential gender differences in measured thinking styles since studies have shown that females and males could differ in their analytic skills and intuitive-analytic thinking .The different thinking styles, namely, analytic vs. holistic, have been long associated with Western and East Asian cultures, respectively. Our findings from two studies have provided some preliminary evidence that thinking styles of native English speakers, especially when measured by verbal formats, are highly variable across individuals and context dependent. In Study 1, we showed large individual differences in thinking styles, and when measured with a verbal format, more individuals became holistic thinkers from analytic thinkers compared to when measured with a pictorial format. In Study 2, we used an experiment to demonstrate that exposure to verbal labels highlighting the categorical associations would lead participants, especially females, to prefer categorical candidates in the verbal triad task. These findings converge on the idea that thinking styles can be variable instead of static, and language can impact thinking styles of individuals from moment to moment.Results from Study 1 and Study 2 may seemingly be contradictory since Study 1 suggested that people became more holistic thinkers with the verbal triad task whereas in Study 2, participants were shifted to analytic thinkers after being primed with verbal labels.
However, they actually converge on the observation that language could impact thinking styles, but the exact direction depends on the feature of the verbal information and the contexts. The triad tasks in Study 1 assess relative strength of categorical and relational pairs of images or words, resembling word association and semantic priming . Previous meta-reviews have pointed out that both semantic and relational associations could lead to a priming effect, but the semantic association depends on feature overlaps of objects whereas the relational association is also influenced by word association in text . In addition, a previous study has shown that the semantic priming effect is stronger in the verbal than pictorial formats . Therefore, when the triad task was implemented in a verbal format, the relational association became “boosted” so people chose the relational candidates more compared to the pictorial format. In Study 2, we primed people to focus on the categorical associations by using names that highlighted the categorical information. Specifically, the verbal labels like “berry”, “nut”, and “ball” in the prime condition made the shopping task easier to the participants if they looked for the verbal similarity. This verbal similarity would then further promote a focus on the category similarity. Consequently, participants were potentiated for the categorical association in the triad task. Thus, the influence of the verbal labels was directly “translated” into the triad task, and people tended to continue focusing on the categorical associations and chose the categorical candidates more, resulting in a shift to analytic thinking. The different results of Study 1 and Study 2 could also partially, if not all, result from the task instructions. In Study 1, we instructed participants to find candidate word/picture that goes “together” with the target word, indicating an emphasis on relationships; however, in Study 2, the shopping task required participants to “sort/separate” items, promoting some analytical processes. Nevertheless, this possibility still points to the factor that thinking styles can be viable and influenced by language. Therefore, although the influence of verbal labels shifted people’s thinking styles in the opposite directions in Studies 1 and 2, they both manifested the potential impact of language on measured thinking styles. It is worth noting that our findings mostly showed the short-term effects of language on thinking styles, since the verbal labels only created task-specific contexts when measuring thinking styles. At most, our results suggest that language could influence thinking styles and explain cultural differences in thinking styles . In particular, we want to focus on the results from Study 2. One motivation for Study 2 came from the observation that categorical associations are prevalently emphasized in Mandarin Chinese, so this feature in Mandarin Chinese could potentially cultivate a focus on the overall similarity of object categories, fostering a holistic thinking style. In contrast to this hypothesis, we did not observe that people became more holistic thinkers after being primed with categorical information. Instead, we found that categorical information made females in our sample more likely to use analytic thinking. Hence, in a Western sample, categorical information might have a direct effect, because it makes people focus on the primed category and its distinctiveness from other categories more.