Elizabeth Spelke: Language is the secret ingredient

From the New York Times: Insights from the youngest minds

“Dr. Spelke has proposed that human language is the secret ingredient, the cognitive catalyst that allows our numeric, architectonic and social modules to join forces, swap ideas and take us to far horizons. “What’s special about language is its productive combinatorial power,” she said. “We can use it to combine anything with anything.” … She points out that children start integrating what they know about the shape of the environment, their navigational sense, with what they know about its landmarks — object recognition — at just the age when they begin to master spatial language and words like “left” and “right.” Yet, she acknowledges, her ideas about language as the central consolidator of human intelligence remain unproved and contentious.”