The Centrality of Language in Human Cognition

Abstract

The emergence of language—a productive and combinatorial system of communication—has been hailed as one of the major transitions in evolution. By enabling symbolic culture, language allows humans to draw on and expand on the knowledge of their ancestors and peers. A common assumption among linguists and psychologists is that although language is critical to our ability to share our thoughts, it plays a minor, if any, role in generating, controlling, and structuring them. I examine some assumptions that led to this view of language and discuss an alternative according to which normal human cognition is language‐augmented cognition. I focus on one of the fundamental design features of language—the use of words as symbolic cues—and argue that language acts as a high‐level control system for the mind, allowing individuals to sculpt mental representations of others as well as their own.

From words-as-mappings to words-as-cues: the role of language in semantic knowledge

“…We criticize the words-asmapping view as untenable, and argue for an alternative wherein our semantic knowledge is structured by both direct perceptual and action experiences as well as linguistic experiences. On this view, words, like other perceptual inputs, are cues to meaning and help to construct our conceptual repertoire (Elman, 2004(Elman, , 2009Lupyan, 2016;Lupyan & Thompson-Schill, 2012). This view places language alongside perception and action in its ability to structure semantic knowledge.…”

“…The alternative to thinking about words deriving meanings by mapping onto a separate conceptual landscape, is to think of words as helping to construct meaning, a framework we will gloss as words-as-cues (e.g., Rumelhart, 1979;Elman, 2004Elman, , 2009Lupyan, 2016;Lupyan & Bergen, 2015). On this view, the meaning of a word is "revealed by the effects it has on [mental] states" (Elman, 2004, p. 301).…”

“…However, some insight come from studies in which linguistic factors are experimentally manipulated while people attempt to learn new categories or use existing knowledge to recognize or make inferences about familiar categories. Below, we briefly review evidence that, under the influence of language, semantic knowledge may become more categorical with consequences for behavior ranging from basic perception to reasoning (see Lupyan, 2012Lupyan, , 2016Lupyan & Bergen, 2015;Perry & Lupyan, 2014 for more extended discussion.). To foreshadow: Language appears to promote abstraction.…”

Infographics In Engineering Education: Methods Of Professional Communicative Context Development

“…Visualization is based on the cognitive-visual technology that is a system of actions, logically aligned and sequential, aimed at visual transformation of educational material, the purpose of which is to increase the effectiveness of work with educational information by activating cognitive processes (Lupyan, 2015). With the introduction of cognitive-visual technology, one of our objectives is to create learning conditions that pay great attention to using the reserves of visual thinking of students.…”

Is tuba masculine or feminine? The timing of grammatical gender

“…Some have argued for linguistic universalism (e.g., Fodor, 1975;Pinker, 1994) and others for linguistic relativism (e.g., Sapir, 1921;Slobin, 1996). Despite the considerable literature on language and thought, this long-standing debate is far from over (Boroditsky, 2001(Boroditsky, , 2011Lupyan, 2012Lupyan, , 2015Lupyan, , 2017Lupyan & Bergen, 2015;Tylén, Weed, Wallentin, Roepstorff & Frith, 2010). A common approach to this discussion has been to investigate how grammatical gender influences thought (Cubelli, Paolieri, Lotto & Job, 2011;Phillips & Boroditsky, 2003;Vigliocco, Vinson, Paganelli & Dworzynski, 2005).…”