Language shapes cognition?

  Last week I read an article on the relationships between language and cognition written by Lera Boroditsky. It mentioned that there was an aboriginal group in Australia, the Kuuk Thaayorre. In that language, words like "left" and " right" are not used. Everything in the language is laid out in absolute space as mentioned in the article. For example, you have to say things like "There is an ant on your northwest leg." To speak the language, you must know which absolute direction you are facing. If language really shapes cognition, then a native speaker of that language must have a good sense of direction. When I first came to Taipei, I got lost often. If learning a language could affect cognition, a language like that would be a good candidate for me to improve my sense of direction. However, I take that with a grain of salt. More persuading evidence should be provided. It is said that learning German enable you to think more logically because the syntactic structures are complex for me as a native speaker of Chinese. From personal experience, I didn't make big progress in learning math such as statistics. Do you guys have any personal experience on any possible ways language shapes your cognition?