Cognitive diversity

How minds differ across cultures and languages.

To study cognitive diversity, the lab does research in a variety of cultural settings, including among indigenous, small-scale societies. Most of this diversity has focused on the Tsimane’, a group of farmer-foragers living in the Amazon basin of Bolivia. We are also establishing a new fieldsite in Belize among Mopan and Q’eqchi’ Maya communities.

The Tsimane' live in small communities along the Maniqui river in lowland Bolivia.
Left: Some Tsimane' communities are accessible only by river canoe. Center: Some Tsimane' children attend school, but the level of formal schooling varies widely among adults. Right: A native Tsimane' research assistant interviews a Tsimane' girl in her local schoolhouse.

Example study: Mental mappings across cultures

Here an indiegnous Tsimane' woman organizes pictures of ripening bananas in order from oldest to newest. Although people everywhere seem to use space to think about time, the specific direction of this mental timeline (and other mental mappings) depends on cultural practices like reading and writing. Without such practices, these mappings are orderly but have no default direction: Tsimane' adults were equally likely to make mappings that went downwards and upwards, rightwards and leftwards, and away and towards them (Pitt et al., 2021).

References

2021

  1. Spatial concepts of number, size, and time in an indigenous culture
    Benjamin Pitt, Stephen Ferrigno, Jessica F Cantlon, and 3 more authors
    Science Advances, 2021
    Featured in ScienceNews and ntv
    DOI PDF