[Edit] Experimental support

The opposing idea — that language has absolutely no influence on thought at all — is widely considered to be false (Gumperz: introduction to Gumperz 1996). But the strong version of the Sapir/Whorf hypothesis, that language determines thought, is also thought to be incorrect. The most common view is that the truth lies somewhere in between the two and current linguists, rather than studying whether language affects thought, are studying how it affects thought. Earlier, the bulk of the research was concentrated on supporting or disproving the hypothesis; the experimental data have not been able to disprove it.

Investigation into the recall of linguistic entities confirms that the brain stores associations between semantic concepts (like the idea of a house) and phonetic representation (the sounds that make up the word "house"). The initial sounds are more important for recall purposes than later sounds. Relationships between semantic concepts are also stored, but indirect relationships between unrelated concepts can be inadvertently triggered by a "bridge" through a phonetic relationship. For example, the recall of the idea of a house can be sped up by exposure to the word "Home" because they share the same initial sound.^{[citation needed]}

[Edit] Criticism

Many psychological experiments concern the means by which the brain processes, stores, and recalls information. Some studies^{[citation needed]} concerning the storage of linguistic utterances (e.g. when listening to someone speak, or when reading a book) suggest that in most cases the brain stores the actual words recorded by the senses for only a very short period of time and that for people with the capability to hear spoken language, this representation is phonetic, even for written language. (This is related to, for example, the relatively high frequency of spelling mistakes involving homophones like "there" and "their".) Unless special effort is made at rote memorization, longer term storage of utterances involves distillation into a simpler semantic representation. Thus when people are asked to recall an utterance, they are generally able to easily replicate the meaning - they capture the "gist" of what was said or written - but are unable to reproduce the exact wording (though in many cases they do not realize they are using slightly different words than the original speaker [see Chinese Whisper]). The existence of a semantic representation distinct from phonetic representation raises questions about how closely tied the two layers are, or need to be.

The processing and storage of spatial information (one aspect of "thought") appears to involve some non-linguistic aspects. For example, some experiments^{[citation needed]} consider the problem of object comparison. Imagine a cartoon drawing of a house. Now imagine two copies of that drawing. The first is rotated clockwise 90 degrees, so the house is lying on its side. The second is only rotated 45 degrees, so the house is simply tilted. Suppose that these three drawings are mixed in with similar drawings in random rotations, which do not actually represent houses. The experimental subject is shown the picture of the house and asked to identify which drawings in the lineup are the same. Studies which have performed this experiment show that the time it takes for someone to correctly recognize the tilted versions of the same picture is proportional to the amount of rotation. This leads to the hypothesis that the brain is "mentally rotating" the candidate pictures to attempt to match the reference copy, and that it takes longer to rotate through 90 degrees than 45. Experimenters assert that this process is possibly independent of either the semantic concept of "house" or the word that represents it and this raises doubts about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Psychological studies of animals indicate that they are able to process and store certain types of spatial information (such as geographical information about territory and food sources). This and the close relationship between spatial memory and the visual system suggests to some researchers that these aspects of the brain may have evolved before spoken language.