Article

Shared Human Symbolic Cognition Across Time and Culture

2026-06-25

Abstract excerpt

<p>Humans uniquely externalize ideas through abstract visual symbols. Although symbols are ubiquitous across human cultures and history, the cognitive basis of symbolic meaning remains unclear. We tested whether human symbolic interpretation is supported by shared cognitive tendencies that allow convergence across individuals, cultures, and historical periods without shared conventions. We collected 40,416 open-en...

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Literature Corpus work: f91c2d8f-1171-54f1-91cf-4a8ddc05032a
DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/njksg_v1

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