#anna ivanova

Russian Actress - Model: Anna Ivanova (@

“In the end of the day“ A.Ivanova

Language Is the Scaffold of the Mind (Anna Ivanova, Nautilus, Sep 26 2019)

“As a result of this language-number interdependency, many deaf children in industrialized societies fall behind in math, precisely because they did not learn to count early on.

Another part of your mind that needs language to develop properly is social cognition.

Think about your interactions with your family and friends. Why is your mom upset? Why did your friend go inside the house just now?

Understanding social situations requires inferring what the people around you are thinking.

This ability to infer another person’s thoughts is known as “theory of mind”; typically developing kids acquire this skill by age 5 or so.

However, children with delayed language access have trouble imagining the mental state of other people.

Moreover, brain regions involved in inferring others’ thoughts work differently in such children:

They are active during all kinds of social situations, unable to properly distinguish scenarios that require mentalizing from those that do not.

Theory of mind, therefore, is a prime example of a non-linguistic process that suffers if linguistic input is delayed.

So far, the evidence we have seen does suggest that “the limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”

However, what happens if language disappears once the mind is fully developed? Will we then lose the ability to use math and understand others? (…)

Well, pick a mind that is still developing, and you will find that removing language will alter it for life.

However, pick a mind that is fully formed and take all words away, and you will discover that the rest of cognition remains mostly intact. 

By Anna Ivanova

By Anna Ivanova