As it turns out, the Gurindji people have a heightened sense of orientation, able to even detect the Earth’s magnetic field and use it as birds do.
I’ve found a bit more info about it in this page, for anyone interested. Apparently humans do have some poorly used geomagnetic sensory system, and due to their language’s directional system the Gurindji speakers are actually training this system.
Another piece of evidence might come from colour mapping: I predict that speakers are more likely to confuse two hues if they’re labelled by the same primary colour word in their language, even if their visual accuracy is similar.
There’s also been some similar research into “perfect pitch”. Populations with a tonal native language (like Mandarin) have a higher rate of perfect pitch. It seems likely to me that this is because they learned to associate tone with meaning from a very young age as part of language acquisition. See https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/speaking-tonal-languages/
I’ve found a bit more info about it in this page, for anyone interested. Apparently humans do have some poorly used geomagnetic sensory system, and due to their language’s directional system the Gurindji speakers are actually training this system.
Another piece of evidence might come from colour mapping: I predict that speakers are more likely to confuse two hues if they’re labelled by the same primary colour word in their language, even if their visual accuracy is similar.
There’s been some research specifically on color perception and naming, with some debate persisting. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity_and_the_color_naming_debate and https://neurosciencenews.com/color-perception-language-21650/
There’s also been some similar research into “perfect pitch”. Populations with a tonal native language (like Mandarin) have a higher rate of perfect pitch. It seems likely to me that this is because they learned to associate tone with meaning from a very young age as part of language acquisition. See https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/speaking-tonal-languages/