A recent study has reported the presence of a significant English bias in the field of cognitive research. It underlined that the scope of Cognitive science is limited due to many English-speaking participants and researchers.?
The study reported that one in every six people worldwide speaks some English language variant without much difficulty. Thus, English has become the most dominant and widespread language in the history of our species.??
Interestingly, the dominance of English can be linked to cognitive science through the Sapir¨CWhorf hypothesis. This principle suggests that a language's structure affects the worldview of its speaker, and it involves the brain's cognition and influences people's perceptions. In other words, a person's primary language affects how they see the world around them.?
?Thus, an American might see the world differently than an Indian, as their brains work differently due to the difference in their spoken language.
Apart from the recent study, researchers at various prominent institutions such as Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Harvard University, Purdue University, etc., also believe that English has significantly influenced people's cognition.?
Many researchers at these institutions believe there has been a generalization among cognitive researchers due to the over-sampling of English speakers. Consequently, several limitations have affected the advancement of this field and impacted several subfields, such as memory, social cognition, perception, and reasoning.?
Several studies have reported that language influences sensory perceptions that are critical to determining cognition; one such determinant is sound.?
Unlike other languages, English is not dependent on tones or specific sounds. On the other hand, 40% of all world languages derive most of their meanings from particular sounds, and one such example is Mandarin. The unique characteristic of tone dependency influences cognitive traits such as speech encoding and sensory memory. Thus, being dependent on tones is one difference between the influence of English and other languages on cognition.??
Another difference is the writing direction of people speaking different languages. The focus of writing is reported to affect auditory and visual inferences. It is also proven by several studies on illiterate people with no such preference. These studies have pointed out a tight association between cognitive processes related to reading and the type of script used by participants. Most of these studies are based on the unique traits of the English language, such as consonants and vowels.?
Any language we speak directly connects cognitive categories such as problem-solving, impact learning, and reasoning. Beyond our senses, different languages impact other factors, such as spatial relations, numerical representation, causality, motion events, etc., in different ways.??
The most significant disadvantage of these differences between English and other languages is that cognitive science dominated by English cannot be transferred and understood by speakers of other languages.?
To reduce this gap between different languages, scientists have suggested several solutions. They include using language-open databases, increasing participation of non-English speakers in cognitive studies through crowdsourcing, organizing studies in other cultures, and increasing the coordination between institutes of different countries.