August 25, 2004

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  August 20, 2004

  
  

  Study Suggests Language Shapes Thoughts

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Shakespeare once wrote “that which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet.” But does the fact that it's called a rose actually affect how people perceive the flower?   Findings indicate that the language of numbers shapes how members of a small South American tribe count. Peter Gordon of Columbia University spent years studying an isolated Amazon tribe called the Pirahã. Pirahã people use a counting system in which quantities beyond two are not differentiated but are instead referred to simply as “many.” In addition, the word for “one” can actually mean “approximately one.” Gordon gave tribe members numerical tasks in which they were asked to match small groups of items based on how many objects were present. Although the adults performed well when there were one, two or three items, their accuracy declined when there were eight to 10 things. With larger groups, they always answered incorrectly.

  The results indicate that language can define cognition, at least when it comes to numbers. “Whether one language chooses to distinguish one thing versus another affects how an individual perceives reality.”  --Sarah Graham

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