Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas 89 | Lera Boroditsky on Language, Thought, Space, and Time
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Mar 23, 2020 Lera Boroditsky, an associate professor of cognitive science at UC San Diego, dives deep into how language influences thought, especially regarding time and space. She discusses how different cultures conceptualize time, revealing fascinating insights about our subconscious biases. Language can shape memory and perception, influencing our understanding of events. Lera also highlights the cognitive benefits of lifelong language learning and how cultural contexts alter our brain's frameworks, emphasizing the creativity unlocked through new linguistic experiences.
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Ambiguity of "Forward"
- The word "forward" is ambiguous when discussing time.
- People interpret "moving a meeting forward" differently, illustrating how spatial metaphors shape time perception.
Cultural Influence on Time
- Cultural practices, like reading direction, influence how we correlate space and time.
- People who read left-to-right tend to organize time from left to right, and vice-versa for right-to-left readers.
Mandarin Time Metaphors
- Mandarin speakers use vertical metaphors for time, with earlier events being "up" and later events "down".
- Experiments show they implicitly associate up with earlier and down with later, impacting their responses.