Over-reliance on English hinders cognitive science

2022/10/14 by Damián E. Blasí, Damián E. Blasi, Joseph Henrich +3 · 6 voices · 390 citations
Neuroscience · Psychology · #Categorization, perception, and language #Cognition #Cognitive psychology #Cognitive science #English language #Language, Metaphor, and Cognition #Linguistics #Mathematics education #Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism #Neuroscience #Psychology

paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/j.tics.2022.09.015

published in Trends in Cognitive Sciences 26(12), 1153-1170 (Elsevier BV)

openalex publication_date 2022/10/14 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04

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Discussions

• Overreliance on English hinders cognitive science – premature claims of universality (due to over-sampling of English speakers) – limited cognitive constructs being examined (due to the use of Engli [bsky, 165 points, 7 comments]
• It's research like this that I almost had me switching careers out of music into Comparative Neurocognition/Neurolinguistics. The figure is from an article titled "Over-reliance on English hinders cog [bsky, 20 points, 0 comments]
• doi.org/10.1016/j.ti... #linguisticjustice [bsky, 2 points, 0 comments]
• I meant to say "the lack of linguistic (and therefore cultural, geographical, etc.) in other areas of knowledge." A recent paper in cognitive science makes a similar point about the dangers of studyi [bsky, 1 points, 0 comments]
• The #sociolinguistics issues highlighted in this book have implications for us in language sciences and disorders. As I read this book, I think of pubs like Blasi et al. (2022) doi.org/10.1016/j.ti... [bsky, 1 points, 1 comments]
• Been reading this paper by @blasi_lang @JoHenrich @EvangeliaAdamou Kemmerer & @asifa_majid and can recommend it — Figure 1 is likely to end up in many lecture slides http://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2022 [bsky, 0 points, 1 comments]