Editing Cognitive development (section)

=== Whorf's hypothesis ===
{{Main|Linguistic relativity}}
While working as a student of [[Edward Sapir]], [[Benjamin Lee Whorf]] posited that a person's thinking depends on the structure and content of their social group's language. Per Whorf, language determines our thoughts and perceptions.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Whorf|first=Benjamin|date=1940|title=Linguistics as an Exact Science Language|journal=Thought and Reality}}</ref> For example, it used to be thought that the Greeks, who wrote left to right, thought differently than Egyptians since the Egyptians wrote right to left. Whorf's theory was so strict that he believed if a word is absent in a language, then the individual is unaware of the object's existence.<ref name="Hunt, E. 1991">{{cite journal | last1 = Hunt | first1 = E. | last2 = Agnoli | first2 = F. | year = 1991 | title = The Whorfian hypothesis: A cognitive psychology perspective | journal = Psychological Review | volume = 98 | issue = 3| pages = 377–389 | doi = 10.1037/0033-295X.98.3.377 }}</ref> This theory was played out in George Orwell's book, [[Animal Farm]]; the pig leaders slowly eliminated words from the citizen's vocabulary so that they were incapable of realizing what they were missing.<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Mosenthal | first1 = P | year = 1975 | title = Language and thought | journal = Theory into Practice | volume = 14 | issue = 5| pages = 306–311 | doi = 10.1080/00405847509542592 }}</ref> The Whorfian hypothesis failed to recognize that people can still be aware of the concept or item, even though they lack efficient coding to quickly identify the target information.<ref name="Hunt, E. 1991" />