Great point. They even did a bad job of reading the title. The title wasn't "Language is not essential for thought", the title was "Language is not essential for the cognitive processes *underlying* thought."
We'd better hope that is true, because if we didn't have non-linguistic mastery of the cognitive processes underlying thought it's hard to see how we could even acquire language in the first place.
We'd better hope that is true, because if we didn't have non-linguistic mastery of the cognitive processes underlying thought it's hard to see how we could even acquire language in the first place.