Replication of ‘Language is not Just for Talking: Redundant Labels Facilitate Learning of Novel Categories’ by Lupyan, Rakison, & McClelland (2007, Psychological Science)

Author

Caroline Kaicher (ckaicher@stanford.edu)

Published

October 3, 2025

Introduction

Justification

I am interested in how labels help children and adults learn categories. Lupyan, Rakison, and McClelland (2007) contributes to this question by showing that labels help adults learn object categories (in this case, categories of aliens) faster than when they have no labels, or have other nonlinguistic cues. This paper is particularly compelling because the labels are “redundant”, in other words they do not provide additional information to the participants about the category distinctions. Therefore, it is presumed that there is something “special” about having a label to associate category exemplars with in the category learning process. Thus, while words play an important role in category learning by pointing out useful category distinctions in the environment, they may be playing an even bigger role in facilitating the category learning process – however, the exact nature and mechanism of this role is unknown.

Stimuli and Procedures

Lupyan, Rakison, and McClelland (2007) consists of 2 experiments, and I will be replicating experiment 2. To conduct this experiment, I will need to recreate their category learning task. I will use PsychoPy, as this is the experiment-building software I am most familiar with, and host it online using Pavlovia. The task will have 4 conditions: No Label, Written Label, Auditory Label, and Location (nonlinguistic cue). The stimuli I will need are recordings of the auditory labels and the alien images they used in the original experiment. The images from the original study where created by Mike Tarr’s lab (the YUFO stimulus set), and are publicly available on their website.

The main challenge I anticipate for this study is finding the specific alien images the authors used in the two categories. Luckily, all the images they used are shown in Figure 1 of the paper, but there are a lot of images in the original stimulus set, so I will need to comb through them to find the exact ones. Other than that, the description of the category learning task seems clear and includes all the necessary details to recreate it.

Methods

Power Analysis

Original effect size, power analysis for samples to achieve 80%, 90%, 95% power to detect that effect size. Considerations of feasibility for selecting planned sample size.

Planned Sample

Planned sample size and/or termination rule, sampling frame, known demographics if any, preselection rules if any.

Materials

All materials - can quote directly from original article - just put the text in quotations and note that this was followed precisely. Or, quote directly and just point out exceptions to what was described in the original article.

Procedure

Can quote directly from original article - just put the text in quotations and note that this was followed precisely. Or, quote directly and just point out exceptions to what was described in the original article.

Analysis Plan

Can also quote directly, though it is less often spelled out effectively for an analysis strategy section. The key is to report an analysis strategy that is as close to the original - data cleaning rules, data exclusion rules, covariates, etc. - as possible.

Clarify key analysis of interest here You can also pre-specify additional analyses you plan to do.

Differences from Original Study

Explicitly describe known differences in sample, setting, procedure, and analysis plan from original study. The goal, of course, is to minimize those differences, but differences will inevitably occur. Also, note whether such differences are anticipated to make a difference based on claims in the original article or subsequent published research on the conditions for obtaining the effect.

Methods Addendum (Post Data Collection)

You can comment this section out prior to final report with data collection.

Actual Sample

Sample size, demographics, data exclusions based on rules spelled out in analysis plan

Differences from pre-data collection methods plan

Any differences from what was described as the original plan, or “none”.

Results

Data preparation

Data preparation following the analysis plan.

Confirmatory analysis

The analyses as specified in the analysis plan.

Side-by-side graph with original graph is ideal here

Exploratory analyses

Any follow-up analyses desired (not required).

Discussion

Summary of Replication Attempt

Open the discussion section with a paragraph summarizing the primary result from the confirmatory analysis and the assessment of whether it replicated, partially replicated, or failed to replicate the original result.

Commentary

Add open-ended commentary (if any) reflecting (a) insights from follow-up exploratory analysis, (b) assessment of the meaning of the replication (or not) - e.g., for a failure to replicate, are the differences between original and present study ones that definitely, plausibly, or are unlikely to have been moderators of the result, and (c) discussion of any objections or challenges raised by the current and original authors about the replication attempt. None of these need to be long.