Language and cognitive science: How language affects reasoning and memory

Abstract

In the last twenty years or so neuroscience and linguistics, language and culture have become increasingly interconnected, as we seek to understand the influence of language on behaviour and the way we think and express ourselves. Neuroscience is the study of how the brain and mind work and cognitive science applies that study to how we use language to express our thoughts and feelings and also how our mental faculties work. One of these faculties is memory. How do we recall and express what has happened in the past and even assuming we can remember it at all? The purpose of this paper is to examine how cognitive science has clarified the relationship between language and culture in particular in the way we remember things and express our recollections, using experiments based on facial recognition. In the process the paper demonstrates how language and culture influence our cultural processes and the importance of cognitive science as a part of language and cultural study.

Keywords

• cognitive science
• verbal overshadowing effect
• linguistics
• logics
• culture
• memory
• neuroscience