Cognitive Science and the Myth of the Normal Human

Abstract

Within cognitive science, research on human cognition relies on the idea of a normative human; that we can study and generalize from normal humans to understand human cognition. This assumption is the only way that using convenience samples to describe cognitive universals makes sense. Cognitive Science is not alone in falling for the idea of a normative person; other social sciences and medical research have sometimes featured this idea. The idea that Cognitive Science research should or could describe normative human cognition is a misleading waste of time for the field. I draw on work from a wide range of fields, including psychology, medicine, disability studies, and biology, to contend that the idea of normative human cognition is mostly useless but not mostly harmless. Rejection of the idea of normative human cognition and reevaluating past work that relies on it is an important step forward for the field.