"Languages differ from one another in innumerable ways, but just because people talk differently does not necessarily mean that they think differently," said Lera Boroditsky, assistant professor of cognitive psychology at Stanford University.

There are approximately 7,000 languages spoken worldwide, and each one involves unique requirements from its speakers. As such, scientists have been investigating the potential effects that language has on the dimensions of human experience—namely, space, time, and causality.

Boroditsky and colleagues have been conducting studies on the connection between language and the spatial and temporal aspects of cognition in recent years.

In the 2010 study, Remembrances Of Times East: Absolute Spatial Representations Of Time In An Australian Aboriginal Community, Boroditsky and her colleague, Alice Gaby, gave English, Hebrew, and Kuuk Thaayorre speakers sets of pictures that show temporal progressions—a man aging, a crocodile growing, and a banana being eaten. The participants were asked to arrange the photographs in order of correct temporal sequence.

Each participant was tested twice, each time facing in a different direction. English speakers arranged the pictures from left to right, and Hebrew speakers arranged them from right to left. The Kuuk Thaayorre speakers, however, arranged them differently from English or Hebrew participants.

"They arranged them from east to west," said Boroditsky. "That is, when they were seated facing south, the cards went left to right. When they faced north, the cards went right to left. When they faced east, the cards came toward the body, and so on."

The subjects were never told which direction they were facing, so Boroditsky and Gaby concluded that the Kuuk Thaayore already knew the cardinal directions they faced, and used their spatial orientation to construct representations of time.

Boroditsky and her student, Caitlin M. Fausey, also looked into the impact of language on the aspect of causality.

"English speakers tend to phrase things in terms of people doing things, preferring [...] constructions, like: 'John broke the vase' even for accidents," said Boroditsky. "Speakers of Japanese or Spanish, in contrast, are less likely to mention the agent when describing an accidental event."

In the 2010 study, Constructing Agency: The Role Of Language, speakers of English, Spanish and Japanese watched videos of two men popping balloons, breaking eggs, and spilling drinks—either intentionally or accidentally. Afterwards, they were given a surprise memory test, and for each event witnessed, they had to say which man did it.

When the results were in, it was shown that speakers of all three languages described intentional events by giving a particular person responsibility. All three groups succeeded equally in remembering who performed each act.

In terms of accidental acts, however, the results were much different.

"Spanish and Japanese speakers were less likely to describe the accidents [by giving responsibility to a particular person] than were English speakers, and they correspondingly remembered who did it less well than English speakers did," Boroditsky concluded.

Boroditsky insists that language is also involved in many other aspects of cognition, like distinguishing between colours, counting, or orienting in small spaces.

"My colleagues and I have found that limiting people's ability to access their language faculties [...] impairs their ability to perform these tasks," said Boroditsky. "There may not be a lot of adult human thinking where language does not play a role."