Question

The following dual passages discuss the relationship between language and human cognition.

Passage A
The initial formulation of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis suggested that language completely determines thought—a strict deterministic view implying that speakers of different languages inhabit fundamentally different, incommensurable cognitive worlds. Under this rigid paradigm, the grammatical structures of one's native tongue were thought to place absolute boundaries on what could be conceptualized. Today, the field of cognitive linguistics has largely and rightfully rejected this strong version of the hypothesis. Extensive cross-cultural psychological testing has yielded no evidence that the absence of a specific grammatical category prevents a speaker from ultimately grasping or expressing a particular concept. The human mind is remarkably flexible. However, a "weaker" form of linguistic relativity has recently found robust, measurable empirical support. We now understand that language routinely and obligatorily directs our attention to specific aspects of experience during the act of communication. For instance, if a given language requires speakers to specify the spatial location of an object or the exact source of their knowledge (evidentials) in every sentence, its speakers must habitually attend to these environmental details. Thus, while a language does not build an inescapable cognitive prison that precludes novel thoughts, it undeniably forges well-worn neural and cognitive pathways. These linguistic habits subtly but pervasively influence downstream cognitive processes, such as memory retention and visual perception, by dictating what information is most salient in daily life.

Passage B
For decades, the pendulum of theoretical linguistics swung dramatically away from Benjamin Lee Whorf’s theories, driven by the Chomskyan search for universal, innate cognitive structures underlying all human language. These universalists correctly pointed out that human beings are universally capable of learning any secondary language and understanding any translated concept, dealing a fatal blow to the notion that our native tongue strictly dictates our conceptual limits or acts as an impermeable barrier to cross-cultural understanding. We are unequivocally not trapped by the structural confines of our grammar. Yet, the complete dismissal of Whorfian concepts by late-twentieth-century linguists was ultimately premature and overly broad. Recent, highly controlled cross-linguistic psychological studies reveal that the structural idiosyncrasies of a language can indeed exert a profound effect on supposedly non-linguistic cognitive tasks. When speakers of languages with fundamentally different color terminologies or absolute spatial coordinate systems (e.g., using cardinal directions rather than left/right) are tested on non-verbal memory and matching tasks, their performance reliably aligns with their native linguistic categories. This empirical data suggests that language acts as an ever-present cognitive tool that biases how we parse and process sensory information. The architecture of a language does not rigidly define our overarching cognitive capacity, but it does serve as a continuous framing mechanism, subtly shaping how we automatically categorize and remember the world around us.

Which one of the following most accurately expresses a view held by both of the authors regarding the relationship between language and cognition?