Over-reliance on English hinders cognitive science, 2022, Blasi etc al

Over-reliance on English hinders cognitive science

Damián E.Blasi, Joseph Henrich, Evangelia Adamou, David Kemmerer, Asifa Majid

Highlights

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.

Abstract

English is the dominant language in the study of human cognition and behavior: the individuals studied by cognitive scientists, as well as most of the scientists themselves, are frequently English speakers. However, English differs from other languages in ways that have consequences for the whole of the cognitive sciences, reaching far beyond the study of language itself. Here, we review an emerging body of evidence that highlights how the particular characteristics of English and the linguistic habits of English speakers bias the field by both warping research programs (e.g., overemphasizing features and mechanisms present in English over others) and overgeneralizing observations from English speakers’ behaviors, brains, and cognition to our entire species. We propose mitigating strategies that could help avoid some of these pitfalls.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364661322002364

 

This may have significance for studying cognitive deficits in individuals and populations who are not first language English speakers, this likely includes ME/CFS patients with cognitive problems. Given that cognitive impairments are for many patients a key characteristic of ME/CFS this is an aspect which may significantly affect the diagnosis of ME/CFS in non anglophone populations.

 

But language isn't central to cognition. This sounds like hot air to me.

 

They don't listen and understand and comprehend in English I doubt its different in different languages given what is happening in Norway and other european countries that is mirroring what is happening in the UK.

 

Pick the bad psychological research paper of your choice. Translate it to a different language. Does that improve the bad science?

Language, and its historical biases, can have an impact. Describing an ME symptom as 'unrestful sleep' directs thought processes towards sleep disorders, rather than 'this is a symptom unrelated to sleep that isn't reduced by sleep, so sleep really has nothing to do with it'. Do other languages have better definitions of 'fatigue' or better designations for the English symptom 'unrefreshing sleep' that don't imply that it is a sleep disorder?

I wonder whether certain fields of science produce better results in Russian or Chinese or Spanish. A statistical analysis would have to adjust for funding, numbers of researchers, culture (intercommunication, rewards, etc). Hmmm, it would probably end up being bad research.

I wonder whether it would be better research if done in ancient Hindi, or Aztec?

 

Klingon probably doesn't have words for "fatigue"or "I don't feel well". Such weaknesses are just not spoken about.

 

Should it be ?

Over-reliance on Cognitive Science Hinders the English

 

Unrefreshing sleep is a good example to use. I can vaguely remember, almost fifty years ago, feeling annoyed when the alarm went but I would not describe myself as having unrefreshing sleep since then. I have disturbed sleep, I wake up feeling rotten some mornings, I have vivid, coloured dreams and some nights I barely sleep at all but all that needs twisted into unrefreshing. I am honestly not sure why the IOM chose this as a symptom let alone what they meant by it.

So, even in English, language is twisted for ME. It may be deliberate so that we think they mean what is happening to us but the general public hears a more trivial thing.

They will screw us over in every language.