Dissociations between language and cognition: Cases and implications

Abstract

A n important issue for the cognitive sciences is whether grammar is to THE ISSUESA central question of linguistic theory remains essentially unanswered, namely, how does a child acquire language? This question involves several key issues: issues concerning the quality and quantity of input necessary for language acquisition to occur, and issues concerning the nature of the neuropsychological and cognitive abilities the child must bring to the language-learning task. Researchers addressing these issues have postulated constraints on the linguistic input to the child, on the cognitive capacity of the child, or both, thereby theoretically reducing the necessary complexity of the acquisition process.

Language evolution to revolution: the leap from rich-vocabulary non-recursive communication system to recursive language 70,000 years ago was associated with acquisition of a novel component of imagination, called Prefrontal Synthesis, enabled by a mutation that slowed down the prefrontal cortex maturation simultaneously in two or more children – the Romulus and Remus hypothesis

“…In our meta-analysis of published research, ten out of ten individuals linguistically deprived until puberty suffered lifelong PFS disability despite learning significant vocabulary following an intensive post-pubertal language therapy 3 . For example, Genie, who was linguistically isolated until the age of 13 years 7 months, expanded her vocabulary to several hundred words following multi-year rehabilitation, but never completely acquired ability to understand flexible syntax, verb tense or spatial prepositions 27,28 . Furthermore, like other individuals with PFS disability, she invariably failed in nonverbal mental integration tasks that require PFS, such as those shown in Figure 1 3 .…”

“…It is commonly accepted that childhood use of full recursive syntactic language is essential for normal cognitive development 27,50,54,55 . However, to understand the language evolution, it is fundamentally important to identify a single component of imagination that strictly depends on childhood use of full language.…”

Control and Cross‐Domain Mental Computation: Evidence from Language Breakdown

“…Tager-Flusberg (1994, p. 190) observes this about autistics, and the same claims have been made for Williams syndrome (Thal, Bates, and Bellugi 1989), Turner syndrome (Yamada and Curtiss 1981), and spina bifida with hydrocephalus (Cromer 1994). The unnamed syndromes also manifest remarkably good morphology (Yamada 1990;Curtiss 1981). Perhaps most remarkable in this respect is the individual in Smith and Tsimpli's (1995) study, a savant who can communicate in some fifteen languages but apparently learns them principally by morphological analysis.…”

“…A similar story can be told for syntactic performance. Williams syndrome (Thal, Bates, and Bellugi 1989;Mervis et al 1999, who argue for delayed development with essentially good outcome), Turner syndrome (Yamada and Curtiss 1981), spina bifida with hydrocephalus (Cromer 1994), and the various unnamed syndromes also show good syntax (Yamada 1990;Curtiss 1981), as does autism, at least in some studies (Tager-Flusberg 1994, p. 190). Laura, for instance, has full phrase structure, including operators and empty categories, and understands transformational relations across structures and the difference between well-formed and ill-formed constituency.…”

Aquisição da linguagem: uma retrospectiva dos últimos trinta anos

“…Juckzyk, 1997) requerem que se atribua ao estado inicial do processo de aquisição da linguagem pelo menos um aparato perceptual especializado para o tratamento do material lingüístico. Indivíduos com deficiências cognitivas profundas, de origem genética ou congênita, que mantêm sua capacidade lingüística preservada, de um lado (Bellugi et al, 1993;Curtiss, 1981;Smith & Tsimpli, 1995), e a existência de déficts especificamente lingüísticos no desenvolvimento, de outro (Bishop,1998), sustentam a hipótese da especialização de domínios cognitivos. As perdas seletivas na afasia (Grodzinky, 1990;Swinney & Zurif, 1995) sugerem, ainda, haver especialização não apenas entre domínios cognitivos como no próprio domínio da língua.…”