The evolution of language: Sharing our mental lives

Corballis, Michael C.

doi:10.1016/j.jneuroling.2016.06.003

Cited by 24 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 72 publications

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“…From this assumption, it follows that, if humans think in a predominantly narrative form, it is plausible to maintain that language (whose primary, but not exclusive, function is to express thoughts) finds the most appropriate form for its expression in the narrative medium. Following Corballis (2015 , 2016 ), the origin of language should be considered an event driven by the need to make public the individual (internal and private) mental projections in space and in time. If the form of representation imposes constraints on the way we communicate our thoughts, this means that our ancestors were once faced with the requirement to invent a proper communicative medium to express the mental narratives they used to represent reality.…”

Section: The Narrative Origin Of Languagementioning

confidence: 99%

The Social Brain Is Not Enough: On the Importance of the Ecological Brain for the Origin of Language

Ferretti

2016

Front. Psychol.

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In this paper, I assume that the study of the origin of language is strictly connected to the analysis of the traits that distinguish human language from animal communication. Usually, human language is said to be unique in the animal kingdom because it enables and/or requires intentionality or mindreading. By emphasizing the importance of mindreading, the social brain hypothesis has provided major insights within the origin of language debate. However, as studies on non-human primates have demonstrated that intentional forms of communication are already present in these species to a greater or lesser extent, I maintain that the social brain is a necessary but not a sufficient condition to explain the uniqueness of language. In this paper, I suggest that the distinctive feature of human communication resides in the ability to tell stories, and that the origin of language should be traced with respect to the capacity to produce discourses, rather than phrases or words. As narrative requires the ability to link events distant from one another in space and time, my proposal is that in order to explain the origin of language, we need to appeal to both the social brain and the ecological brain – that is, the cognitive devices which allow us to mentally travel in space and time.

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Section: The Narrative Origin Of Languagementioning

confidence: 99%

The Social Brain Is Not Enough: On the Importance of the Ecological Brain for the Origin of Language

Ferretti

2016

Front. Psychol.

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“…One of the features of this early evolving system is its generative capacity, our ability to break down or categorize features of objects and combine them to solve problems (see Corballis, 2015, in press). For instance, we can categorize graspable things and hard things and combine them to create a tool that is effective at hammering.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Differential Tuning of Ventral and Dorsal Streams during the Generation of Common and Uncommon Tool Uses

Matheson

Buxbaum

Thompson-Schill

2017

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

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Our use of tools is situated in different contexts. Prior evidence suggests that diverse regions within the ventral and dorsal streams represent information supporting common tool use. However, given the flexibility of object concepts, these regions may be tuned to different types of information when generating novel or uncommon uses of tools. To investigate this, we collected fMRI data from participants who reported common or uncommon tool uses in response to visually presented familiar objects. We performed a pattern dissimilarity analysis in which we correlated cortical patterns with behavioral measures of visual, action, and category information. The results showed that evoked cortical patterns within the dorsal tool use network reflected action and visual information to a greater extent in the uncommon use group, whereas evoked neural patterns within the ventral tool use network reflected categorical information more strongly in the common use group. These results reveal the flexibility of cortical representations of tool use and the situated nature of cortical representations more generally.

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“…It also shows at the same time that one's learning cannot be absolutely placed on motivation but preferably on a sense of liking or preference. Descartes in Corballis (2016) says that our body is not a machine that can move on its own but our body is a creature that has a soul in which there is a mind. When it is linked to motivation that has a starting point for physiological needs, it is certainly clear that motivation is not reliable or cannot be used as the main basis for one's learning (see Anselme, 2007;Green, 2016) and what should be the basis is a feeling of like that does have a starting point for psychological needs.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

I Prefer My Own Ways to Acquire My English Speaking Skills: A Grounded Research

Arung

Rafli

Dewanti

2019

IJHE

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Formal educational practitioners tend to neglect the students’ sense of liking; we labled as Preferent learning, in order to acquire certain skill in the learning foreign language, especially speaking skills. In general, so far, issues of formal learning with the focus on bounded academic rules, cognition, and motivation have been used as the main basis for the learning foreign language and even learning in general. In fact, the individual learning, language community, social change, and sopihisticated technology need to be considered in how students acquire the skills they want based on their preferences. By investigating how the University students in Kolaka learned and improved their English speaking skills, we applied a Grounded study that involved 10 informants who were the students and alumni of the English Language Education Study Program of the University X in Kolaka, Southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia. All data were collected 12 times in 3 stages then were analyzed using three steps of Strauss and Corbin's analysis that applied theoretical sampling and constant comparison in generating the substantive theory. The findings revealed that the informants acquired the English speaking skills because of a sense of liking or preference toward any topic to learn. Further, they prefer to learn in an unpredictable ways without any rules and an informal self-evaluation were applied as a way in sustaining the skills.

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The evolution of language: Sharing our mental lives

Cited by 24 publications

References 72 publications

The Social Brain Is Not Enough: On the Importance of the Ecological Brain for the Origin of Language

The Social Brain Is Not Enough: On the Importance of the Ecological Brain for the Origin of Language

Differential Tuning of Ventral and Dorsal Streams during the Generation of Common and Uncommon Tool Uses

I Prefer My Own Ways to Acquire My English Speaking Skills: A Grounded Research

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