Turning Our Words into Actions.

Linguists have been trying to map language (and all it's cognitive aspects) in the brain. We now know (generally) where speech is produced, where grammar comes into the picture, where written language is decoded, etc.

Recently, linguists have been looking for meaning in the brain. For example, you just heard the word 'cat', but is your concept of 'cat' stored in the same place as your perception of someone saying the word 'cat'? The short answer is 'no'. Most studies of this nature (trying to localize word meaning in the brain) have focused on concrete, visual nouns. In a study by Hauk, Johnsrude, and Pavermuller (2004), the question of word localization is applied to action words with very interesting results.

Their experiment was elegant. They chose three categories of action words, each related to a different region of the body (specifically face/tongue words like "lick", arm words, "throw", and leg words, "kick"). They selected 50 words for each category and then had their subjects read them (silently), all while in an fMRI brain scanning machine. Turns out that the (non-language-specific) areas of the brain that are activated by DOING the physical action (of the word) overlap significantly with the brain areas activated be just READING the word. Let me run that by you again. Reading an action word like "throw" activates the arm-related area of the motor cortex as well as normal language areas.

Now, no experiment should be taken too seriously, but this data implies that the meaning of a word (at least the meaning of an action word) lies somewhere between understanding the word and doing the action.

In My Mind's Ear

I was talking with a friend today who told me to "listen to something with my mind's eye." This made me wonder whether or not there is such a thing as a 'mind's ear'. Upon further discussion an reflection, we concluded that there must be a 'mind's ear', at least metaphorically, because otherwise it could never get too loud to hear yourself think. Now, I like working out kinks in common metaphors as much as the next person, but this conclusion of ours lead to another, more complicated question: How can there be a listener (the mind's ear) and a speaker (the self) within a single (sane) mind, what areas of the self/cognition are responsible for hearing and speaking, and how is all this synthesized into a cohesive whole? These are essentially questions that lie at the heart of Cognitive Science. Any thoughts on the subject?

Dreaming = Normal?

Department of Redundancy Department

Science asks questions. When science gets an answer it's easy, for the media especially, though scientists have been guilty as well, to think that it is the answer. More and more evidence indicates that many biological systems, especially the human nervous system, are naturally and necessarily redundant. We can regulate our body temperature by storing fat or sweating, we can write a letter with a pencil or a computer, etc. Though redundancy seems to be an inefficient use of energy, it makes a system much more stable and durable.

When a person is forming complex words, for example, "walked", there are two language mechanisms available; you can simply memorize the world "walked" as a single unit, or you can consciously construct it from "walk" and "-ed." Recent studies show that rather than using one mechanism all the time, people tend to use a specific mechanism depending on the situation. People tend to memorize high frequency words like "walked" and construct rare words, like "balked." An interesting side note, estrogen is a memory aid, so women use the memorization method for more words (on average) than men.

Many of the new findings in neuroscience may make more sense if we try to see how they might fit in a redundant system, rather than what they do on their own.

This portion of CogSigh brought to you, in part, by Michael Ullman, a Professor of Neuroscience at Georgetown University in his article "More is Sometimes More."

Boss vs. Backseat Driver

When BMW was first introducing cars with voice-automation into their German market they decided to use a female voice. As these cars made their way onto the streets, German drivers began to complain to BMW they did not want to be given instructions from a woman. Their response was so strong and so negative that BMW did a full product recall and substituted in a male voice. There were no further complaints.

This nugget was mined from the KPBS film "Do You Speak American?"

Ridiculously Interesting Neuromarketing Post Alert!

I just read a recent post on one of my favorite blogs (see Neuromarketing on the sidebar) about how the order in which information is presented dramatically changes its reception. He mentions a study conducted by Frank Luntz in which focus groups watched three video clips related to Ross Perot (a biography, a third party recommendation and a speech). The groups who saw the speech first, followed by positive background information, responded overwhelmingly more negatively to Perot than the groups who first saw the clips describing his impressive and successful business history. People respond positively when they are given subtle, even subconscious, promptings. Bottom line: read the full post for a more detailed explanation.

The Language and the Land

A great linguist once said that "a language is a dialect with an army and a navy." The distinction between a language and a dialect (or between different languages) is hard to make independent of politics and a populations' identity. In fact, linguistically, from a structural level, there is no distinction to be made.

The linguistic differences between dialects within the 'Chinese" language are much greater (structurally) than those between the Romance languages (Spanish, French, Italian), however, they aren't recognized independently as different languages. The key to understanding this odd phenomenon is to look at where (linguistically) a people identify themselves. The people of China are united linguistically through a shared script (uniform written word), so the significant structural differences between their dialects aren't as significant. It is very important for the Spanish, French and Italian peoples that their spoken languages be viewed as significantly distinct, in spite of their structural linguistic similarities, because their cultural identity is rooted in their language (among other things).

Language marinates our experience of the world so fully that it is easy to forget that we (social beings that we are) have made it and that it is an organic and dynamic social force, rather than a social tool.