Work

How Language Programs the Mind

Year: 2015

Type: article

Abstract: Many animals can be trained to perform novel tasks. People, too, can be trained, but sometime in early childhood people transition from being trainable to something qualitatively more powerful-being programmable. We argue that such programmability constitutes a leap in the way that organisms learn, interact, and transmit knowledge, and that what facilitates or enables this programmability is the learning and use of language. We then examine how language programs the mind and argue that it does so through the manipulation of embodied, sensorimotor representations. The role language plays in controlling mental representations offers important insights for understanding its origin and evolution.

Source: Topics in Cognitive Science

DOI: 10.1111/tops.12155

Authors: Gary Lupyan, Benjamin Bergen

Institutions: University of Wisconsin–Madison, University of California San Diego

Language: English

Topic: Language and cultural evolution

Subfield: Cultural Studies

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Quality education

Open Access status: bronze

Funder: National Science Foundation