A new study suggests that language helps people to solve spatial problems.
Jennie Pyers, a psychologist at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, tested people who use Nicaraguan Sign Language, which was created by deaf children in Nicaragua about 35 years ago.
"The language is becoming more complex in the hands of the children of the community," she says, "and most older members of the community do not learn the new complexities introduced by the following generation. As a result, the language of the younger adults in the community is more complex than the language of the older adults."
The team of researchers found that the younger signers performed better on spatial tasks:
In one task, participants entered a small rectangular room with three black walls and one red wall. Identical cups were located in each of the four corners of the room. After watching the researcher hide a small object in one of the cups (to the left of the red wall), participants were blindfolded and slowly turned around until they were disoriented. They removed the blindfold and then searched for the small object.
A second task required people to rotate an object mentally. After watching the researcher hide a small object in one of four corner locations of a small box with three black walls and one red wall, the participants were blindfolded and the box was rotated. They removed their blindfold and searched for the hidden object in the rotated box.
In both experiments, the researchers found adults with more complex language skills performed better than the adults with more basic skills.
Click here to read more on the Wellesley College web site.