Cognition around the world

Barbara Gã¶Tsch

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01149

Abstract

Cognition around the world

Highlights

Die Welt des Denkens: Kognitive Einheit, kulturelle Vielfalt, may be translated as “The world of thinking: cognitive unity, cultural diversity.” It represents an impressive and much needed effort in German at bringing together insights from psychology and socio-cultural anthropology about how people around the globe perceive and order the world and how they feel and reason about the world surrounding them
The different areas are treated in distinct chapters, preceded by an introduction outlining the scholarly study of cognition and culture and giving an overview of the book, and followed by a comprehensive conclusion and three different indices, including one on “countries, languages, and cultures.”
Very much in the style of a textbook, the individual chapters all follow a similar structure. They provide information on a cognitive phenomenon, first detailing what is known about it from a Western psychological or natural science perspective, and putting this in relation with studies that may roughly be grouped as appertaining to the field of cognitive anthropology

Summary

Introduction

Die Welt des Denkens: Kognitive Einheit, kulturelle Vielfalt, may be translated as “The world of thinking: cognitive unity, cultural diversity.” It represents an impressive and much needed effort in German at bringing together insights from psychology and socio-cultural anthropology about how people around the globe perceive and order the world and how they feel and reason about the world surrounding them. Eight areas that mental activity is directed at are addressed in particular: (1) color perception (2) the classification of plants and animals (3) logical reasoning (4) counting and calculating (5) spatial reasoning (6) reasoning about time (6) navigating the sea (7) social cognition and perspective taking (8) emotions.

Results

Conclusion