Make cognitive science non-WEIRD

January 10, 2023 11:05 AM

Over-reliance on English hinders cognitive science.

The cognitive sciences have been dominated by English-speaking researchers studying other English speakers.
We review studies examining language and cognition, contrasting English to other languages, by focusing on differences in modality, form-meaning mappings, vocabulary, morphosyntax, and usage rules.
Critically, the language one speaks or signs can have downstream effects on ostensibly nonlinguistic cognitive domains, ranging from memory, to social cognition, perception, decision-making, and more.
The over-reliance on English in the cognitive sciences has led to an underestimation of the centrality of language to cognition at large.
To live up to its mission of understanding the representational and computational capacities of the human mind, cognitive science needs to broaden the linguistic diversity represented in its participants and researchers.

posted by signal (5 comments total)

The rise in use of the acronym WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic) is the most brilliant (and passive aggressive) move since the PATRIOT Act.

I look forward to reading the rest of the article, looks really interesting.
posted by gwint at 11:29 AM on January 10, 2023 [6 favorites]

This reminds me of the rather infamous "Sapir-Whorf hypothesis" or more generally termed now "linguistic relativity." which is the idea that language affects our experience of the world. In other words, the language you speak affects how you perceive the world. There are two versions, "strong" implies that language determines how you experience the world and "weak" where it influences how you perceive the world. This idea has been around since ancient times. So if your language affects how you think about the world, then it affects cognition, so any attempt at formulating how cognition works would have to include language as a variable.
posted by njohnson23 at 11:32 AM on January 10, 2023 [7 favorites]

For anyone who is interested, may I introduce Dr. Neil Lewis Jr., a Cornell psychologist who has (among so many other striking things related to psychology and policy) found "Differences in environmental issue conceptualization by race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. "
posted by BlueBlueElectricBlue at 11:38 AM on January 10, 2023 [2 favorites]

The Lingthusiasm podcast has an episode that mentions the WEIRD classification with respect to psychology and linguistics research: What words sound spiky across languages?
posted by jomato at 12:14 PM on January 10, 2023 [2 favorites]

Temple Grandin has an editorial in The Ny Times, about visuL vs verbal thinkers. It relates to this.Here, should open OK
posted by Oyéah at 1:04 PM on January 10, 2023 [2 favorites]