Language, Biology and Cognition

Language, Biology and Cognition
Author: Prakash Mondal
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2020-08-14
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9783030237172

This book examines the relationship between human language and biology in order to determine whether the biological foundations of language can offer deep insights into the nature and form of language and linguistic cognition. Challenging the assumption in biolinguistics and neurolinguistics that natural language and linguistic cognition can be reconciled with neurobiology, the author argues that reducing representation to cognitive systems and cognitive systems to neural populations is reductive, leading to inferences about the cognitive basis of linguistic performance based on assuming (false) dependencies. Instead, he finds that biological implementations of cognitive rather than the biological structures themselves, are the driver behind linguistic structures. In particular, this book argues that the biological roots of language are useful only for an understanding of the emergence of linguistic capacity as a whole, but ultimately irrelevant to understanding the character of language. Offering an antidote to the current thinking embracing ‘biologism’ in linguistic sciences, it will be of interest to readers in linguistics, the cognitive and brain sciences, and the points at which these disciplines converge with the computer sciences.

Cognition Through Color

Cognition Through Color
Author: Jules B. Davidoff
Publisher: MIT Press (MA)
Total Pages: 244
Release: 1991
Genre: Psychology
ISBN:

A century ago phrenologists described a "bump" for color located just over the eyebrow. Today's modular approach to the organization of the visual cortex is more sophisticated, yet it still holds that there are brain areas dedicated solely to particular aspects of perception. "Cognition through Color "reviews the current status of investigations of color cognition from the standpoint of modern neuropsychology. It provides clear evidence, based on a large body of empirical study that includes the author's own work on color perception and naming, that color appears to be one of the basic building blocks or modules from which perception is constructed and our memories organized. Davidoff systematically relates this evidence to an explicit model of color cognition from sensation through functional role to naming.The original impetus for "Cognition through Color "came from the investigation of individuals with brain damage. There are, for example, patients who have difficulty in naming colors. More important, despite normal color vision, memory for colors can be "split off" from all aspects of memory for shapes and objects, providing a strong case for the notion of modularity in vision.Davidoff shows that to understand how color is remembered, we must know how objects are recognized. He observes that the perception of what we call color is, in essence, the study of the surface properties of objects, and he develops a model in which the mental representations for color can be linked to the knowledge of objects. Throughout he emphasizes detailed critical analysis of experimental data in light of current theories of both perception and cognition.

Language, Biology and Cognition

Language, Biology and Cognition
Author: Prakash Mondal
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 253
Release: 2019-07-17
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 303023715X

This book examines the relationship between human language and biology in order to determine whether the biological foundations of language can offer deep insights into the nature and form of language and linguistic cognition. Challenging the assumption in biolinguistics and neurolinguistics that natural language and linguistic cognition can be reconciled with neurobiology, the author argues that reducing representation to cognitive systems and cognitive systems to neural populations is reductive, leading to inferences about the cognitive basis of linguistic performance based on assuming (false) dependencies. Instead, he finds that biological implementations of cognitive rather than the biological structures themselves, are the driver behind linguistic structures. In particular, this book argues that the biological roots of language are useful only for an understanding of the emergence of linguistic capacity as a whole, but ultimately irrelevant to understanding the character of language. Offering an antidote to the current thinking embracing ‘biologism’ in linguistic sciences, it will be of interest to readers in linguistics, the cognitive and brain sciences, and the points at which these disciplines converge with the computer sciences.

Perception, Cognition, and Language

Perception, Cognition, and Language
Author: Barbara Landau
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 386
Release: 2000
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9780262122283

The essays range across fields foundational to cognitive science, including perception, attention, memory, and language, using formal, experimental, and neuroscientific approaches to issues of representation and learning. These original empirical research essays in the psychology of perception, cognition, and language were written in honor of Henry and Lila Gleitman, two of the most prominent psychologists of our time. The essays range across fields foundational to cognitive science, including perception, attention, memory, and language, using formal, experimental, and neuroscientific approaches to issues of representation and learning. An introduction provides a historical perspective on the development of the field from the 1960s onward. The contributors have all been colleagues and students of the Gleitmans, and the collection celebrates their influence on the field of cognitive science. Contributors Cynthia Fisher, Susan Goldin-Meadow, Katherine Hirsh-Pasek, John Jonides, Phillip Kellman, Michael Kelly, Donald S. Lamm, Barbara Landau, Jack Nachmias, Letitia Naigles, Elissa Newport, W. Gerrod Parrott, Daniel Reisberg, Robert A. Rescorla, Paul Rozin, John Sabini, Elizabeth Shipley, Thomas F. Shipley, John C. Trueswell

Language, Brain, and Cognitive Development

Language, Brain, and Cognitive Development
Author: Jacques Mehler
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 562
Release: 2001
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 9780262041973

The contributions to this collection assess the progress of cognitive science. The questions addressed include: What have we learned or not learned about language, brain, and cognition? Where are we now? Where have we failed? Where have we succeeded?

Cognitive Biology

Cognitive Biology
Author: Luca Tommasi
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2009
Genre: Adaptation (Physiology)
ISBN: 0262012936

In the past few decades, sources of inspiration in the multidisciplinary field of cognitive science have widened. In addition to ongoing vital work in cognitive and affective neuroscience, important new work is being conducted at the intersection of psychology and the biological sciences in general. This volume offers an overview of the cross-disciplinary integration of evolutionary and developmental approaches to cognition in light of these exciting new contributions from the life sciences. This research has explored many cognitive abilities in a wide range of organisms and developmental stages, and results have revealed the nature and origin of many instances of the cognitive life of organisms. Each section of this book deals with a key domain of cognition: spatial cognition; the relationships among attention, perception, and learning, representations of numbers and economic values; and social cognition. Contributors discuss each topic from the perspectives of psychology and neuroscience, brain theory and modeling, evolutionary theory, ecology, genetics, and developmental science.

Language and Cognitive Structures of Emotion

Language and Cognitive Structures of Emotion
Author: Prakash Mondal
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 198
Release: 2016-09-13
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3319336908

This book examines linguistic expressions of emotion in intensional contexts and offers a formally elegant account of the relationship between language and emotion. The author presents a compelling case for the view that there exist, contrary to popular belief, logical universals at the intersection of language and emotive content. This book shows that emotive structures in the mind that are widely assumed to be not only subjectively or socio-culturally variable but also irrelevant to a general theory of cognition offer an unusually suitable ground for a formal theory of emotive representations, allowing for surprising logical and cognitive consequences for a theory of cognition. Challenging mainstream assumptions in cognitive science and in linguistics, this book will appeal to linguists, philosophers of the mind, linguistic anthropologists, psychologists and cognitive scientists of all persuasions.

The Evolution of Cognition

The Evolution of Cognition
Author: Cecilia M. Heyes
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 412
Release: 2000
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 9780262082860

In the last decade, "evolutionary psychology" has come to refer exclusively to research on human mentality and behavior, motivated by a nativist interpretation of how evolution operates. This book encompasses the behavior and mentality of nonhuman as well as human animals and a full range of evolutionary approaches. Rather than a collection by and for the like-minded, it is a debate about how evolutionary processes have shaped cognition. The debate is divided into five sections: Orientations, on the phylogenetic, ecological, and psychological/comparative approaches to the evolution of cognition; Categorization, on how various animals parse their environments, how they represent objects and events and the relations among them; Causality, on whether and in what ways nonhuman animals represent cause and effect relationships; Consciousness, on whether it makes sense to talk about the evolution of consciousness and whether the phenomenon can be investigated empirically in nonhuman animals; and Culture, on the cognitive requirements for nongenetic transmission of information and the evolutionary consequences of such cultural exchange. ContributorsBernard Balleine, Patrick Bateson, Michael J. Beran, M. E. Bitterman, Robert Boyd, Nicola Clayton, Juan Delius, Anthony Dickinson, Robin Dunbar, D.P. Griffiths, Bernd Heinrich, Cecilia Heyes, William A. Hillix, Ludwig Huber, Nicholas Humphrey, Masako Jitsumori, Louis Lefebvre, Nicholas Mackintosh, Euan M. Macphail, Peter Richerson, Duane M. Rumbaugh, Sara Shettleworth, Martina Siemann, Kim Sterelny, Michael Tomasello, Laura Weiser, Alexandra Wells, Carolyn Wilczynski, David Sloan Wilson

Species of Mind

Species of Mind
Author: Colin Allen
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 236
Release: 1999-07-26
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780262511087

The heart of this book is the reciprocal relationship between philosophical theories of mind and empirical studies of animal cognition. Colin Allen (a philosopher) and Marc Bekoff (a cognitive ethologist) approach their work from a perspective that considers arguments about evolutionary continuity to be as applicable to the study of animal minds and brains as they are to comparative studies of kidneys, stomachs, and hearts. Cognitive ethologists study the comparative, evolutionary, and ecological aspects of the mental phenomena of animals. Philosophy can provide cognitive ethology with an analytical basis for attributing cognition to nonhuman animals and for studying it, and cognitive ethology can help philosophy to explain mentality in naturalistic terms by providing data on the evolution of cognition. This interdiscipinary approach reveals flaws in common objections to the view that animals have minds. The heart of the book is this reciprocal relationship between philosophical theories of mind and empirical studies of animal cognition. All theoretical discussion is carefully tied to case studies, particularly in the areas of antipredatory vigilance and social play, where there are many points of contact with philosophical discussions of intentionality and representation. Allen and Bekoff make specific suggestions about how to use philosophical theories of intentionality as starting points for empirical investigation of animal minds, and they stress the importance of studying animals other than nonhuman primates.

Biology of Cognition and Linguistic Analysis

Biology of Cognition and Linguistic Analysis
Author: Aleksandr Vladimirovich Kravchenko
Publisher: Peter Lang
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2008
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9783631566473

This book is an attempt to re-evaluate some basic assumptions about language, communication, and cognition in the light of the new epistemology of autopoiesis as the theory of the living. Starting with a critique of common myths about language and communication, the author goes on to argue for a new understanding of language and cognition as functional adaptive activities in a consensual domain of interactions. He shows that such understanding is, in fact, what marks a variety of theoretical and empirical frameworks in contemporary non-Cartesian cognitive science; thus, cognitive science is in the process of working out new epistemological foundations for the study of language and cognition. In Part Two, the traditional concept of grammar is reassessed from the vantage point of autopoietic epistemology, and an analysis of specific grammatical phenomena in English and Russian is undertaken, revealing common cognitive mechanisms at work in linguistic categories.