Study examines how Persian and Greek rule shaped writing, script, and language use in ancient Central Asia.

On your mental number line, are the numbers smaller on the left or on the right? Two comparative cognition researchers explain how culture may influence the orientation – but also may not.

The brain’s capacity to use and understand language expands rapidly in the first years of life, as babies start to make sense of the words they hear and eventually begin to piece together sentences of their own. The language-processing parts of the brain that make this possible continue to evolve in older children, as they expand their vocabularies and learn to use language more flexibly.

The brain’s capacity to use and understand language expands rapidly in the first years of life. But by age 4, language processing is already handled by the left side of the brain, as in adults, according to an MIT study.

We map the most-spoken language in each state besides English and Spanish. Chinese leads in 13 states, especially along the coasts.