language and thought

How language shapes our perception of time and magnitude

Post

Languages lay time out along different spatial axes and build number words in different orders. Experiments with speakers of Turkish, Aymara, Mandarin, German and English suggest that these habits shape how people place events in space and how quickly they handle two-digit numbers, mostly in childhood and never as a rigid constraint. The essay reviews that evidence and proposes three directions for research that keeps confounds under control.