The Human Conceptual System

The Cambridge Handbook of Psycholinguistics Edited by MICHAEL J. SPI,TEY University of California, Merced KEN MCRAE University of J17estern Ontario MARC F. JOANISSE University of J17estern Ontario ... ,.~.,... CAMBRIDGE ::: UNIVERSITY PRESS CHAPTER 12 The Human Conceptual System Lawrence W. Barsalou The human conceptual system contains i Recording versus interpretative people's knowledge about the world. systems Rather than containing holistic images of experience, the conceptual system repre The distinction between a recording sys sents components of experience, including tem and an interpretive system is central knowledge about settings, objects, people, to characterizing conceptual systems (e.g., actions, events, mental states, properties, Barsalou, 1999b; Dretske, 1995; Haugeland, and relations. Componential knowledge in 1991; Pylyshyn, 1973). A recording system the conceptual system supports a wide vari captures information about a situation by ety of basic cognitive operations, including creating attenuated (not exact) copies of it. categorization, inference, the representation Cameras, video recorders, and audio record of propositions, and the productive creation ers constitute good examples of recording of novel conceptualizations. In turn, these systems, each capturing records of experi basic operations support the spectrum of ence (e.g., photos, videos, audiotapes). A complex cognitive activities, including high recording system does not interpret ·what level perception, attention, memory, lan each component of a recording contains - it guage, thought, and socio-cultural cognition. simply creates an attenuated copy. For exam Traditional theories of Good-Old-Fashioned ple, a photo of a wedding records the light Artificial Intelligence (GOFAI), such as present at each point in the scene without semantic memory, constitute the dominant interpreting the types of entities and events approach to the conceptual system. More present. recently, researchers have developed alter Conversely, a conceptual system inter native approaches, including connectionist prets the entities perceived in an experience theories and simulation/embodied/situated or in a recording of one. To interpret a wed theories. ding, the human conceptual system might BARSALOU construe perceived individuals as instances somewhat like a recording, based both of bride, chair, cake, and so forth.' To achieve on experiential qualities and also on the interpretation, the conceptual system binds numerous feature areas in the brain that specific individuals in perception to knowl are mapped topographically, tonotopical!y, edge about components of experience in and somatotopically (e.g., Bear, Connors, memory. This is essentially the process of and Paradiso, 2001). Although imagery and categorization. A system that only records perception depart significantly from record perceptual experience does not categorize ings in important ways (e.g., Chambers and individuals in this manner. Instead, it simply Reisberg, i992; Hochberg, i998), they nev records them in the holistic context of an ertheless appear to have image-like quali undifferentiated sc€ne. ties such as orientation, extent, resolution, Interpretation supports other powerful vividness, and so forth. Thus, the argument computational abilities besides categoriza here is not that the brain lacks anything tion. Interpretation supports the produc like recording systems. To the extent that tion of inferences, allowing the cognitive the brain represents images in perception system to go beyond perceptual input. and imagery, it appears to utilize recording Interpretation supports the formulation of like representations. Instead, the argument propositions, where a proposition is a repre is that the brain also contains conceptual sentational structure that binds a concept representations used to interpret image (type) to an individual (token) in a manner like representations, thereby implementing that is true or false. Interpretation is produc powerful computational functions such as tive, supporting the construction of complex categorization, inference, propositions, and conceptual representations from simpler productivity. ones. Because the conceptual system sup Selective attention and memory integra ports these basic functions, it provides the tion are central to creating the conceptual larger cognitive system with computational knowledge that underlies interpretive pro abilities not possible in recording systems. cessing (Barsalou, i999b; 2003a). Whenever Cameras and other recording devices have selective attention focuses consistently on limited, if any, ability to implement cat some component of experience, conceptual egorization, inference, propositions, and knowledge about the component develops productivity. (cf. Schyns, Goldstone, and Thibaut, i998). Each time the component is attended, the information extracted becomes integrated i.1 Perceptual versus conceptual with past information about the same com representations ponent in memory. vVhen attention focuses Because recent theories propose that cate on a green patch of color, for example, the gory knowledge is grounded in the brain's information extracted is stored with previ modality-specific systems, it is useful to ous memories of green, thereby establishing establish a distinction between representa conceptual knowledge for this component. tions that are perceptual versus those that Over time, myriad components ofexperience are conceptual. Much work suggests that accumulate memories in a similar manner, the brain produces mental images that are including objects, events, locations, times, much like recordings (e.g., Kosslyn, i980; introspective states, relations, roles, proper i994). Furthermore, perceptual experi ties, and so forth. As conceptual knowledge ence can also be viewed as being at least abo~t these components develops, it can be used to interpret regions of perception and imagery, as described in greater detail later. i Italics \Vill be used to indicate concepts, and quotes Thus, perceptual and conceptual represen \Vill be used to indicate linguistic fqrrns ('i.vords, sen tences). Thus, bride indicates a concept, and "bride" tations work together to achieve cognitive indicates the corresponding \Vord. processing. THE HUMAN CONCEPTUAL SYSTEM :h z Basic operations in a conceptual produces naming. On perceiving a robin, for te system example, conceptual knowledge for robin 1t becomes active to categorize it. In turn, the y, Once a system of conceptual knowledge word "robin" becomes active to name both ·s, develops for components of experience, the perceived individual and the conceptual .d it supports basic conceptual operations, knowledge activated, where the actual word l which in turn support more complex cogni produced is an individual instance of the d tive activities. As just described, these basic word category. Even when naming is implicit ,_ operations include categorization, infer (i.e., subvocal), this can be viewed as the i- ence, propositions, and productivity. Each is production of a word instance, grounded in 1, described in further detail here. Their roles a motor and auditory simulation. lt in complex cognitive activities are addressed Finally, recent work suggests that men .g later. tal simulations are central to linguistic pro lt cessing (e.g., Glenberg et al., 2005; Spivey, n Richardson, and Gonzalez-Marquez, 2005; 2.i Categorization ,_ Zwaan and Madden, 2005). To the extent ' lt During the process of categorization, the that meaning is represented this way, cate 11 cognitive system assigns perceived individu gorizing components of mental simulations ,_ als in perception and imagery to units of is central to linguistic processing. For exam g conceptual knowledge. While perceiving a ple, examining a simulation and categorizing IS soccer match, for example, individual set its components would be central to the pro cl tings (field), people (goalie), object5 (ball), cess of language production. Categorizing actions (kick), mental states (elation), and the components of simulation activates 1- so forth are assigned to categories. vVhile associated words, which are produced tJ imagining a soccer match, imagined indi in utterances to describe the simulation. ,_ viduals in the simulated perception can be Analogously, categorizing components of a ·r categorized similarly. perceived scene similarly underlies the pro n Categorization not only occurs in vision duction of an utterance to describe an actual 11 but in all modalities of experience. Thus, perception. In addition, categorizing regions s auditory events can be categorized (beep), as of a simulated or perceived scene not men ). can actions (walk), tactile sensations (soft), tioned explicitly produces inferences (e.g., e tastes (sweet), smells (pungent), affect inferring knife from an unlabeled region of :I (boredom), motivation (hunger), cognitive the simulation produced by the sentence, states (disbelief), and cognitive operations "Jeffrey cut the sandwich in half"). s (comparison). Furthermore, categorization e is central to processing all units of linguis 2.2 Inference tic analysis, including phonemes ("ba"), ver g balized words ("hello"), and written words An important theme in categorization ("exit"). In each case, a linguistic entity is research is that categorization is not an end categorized as an instance of a phoneme or itself (e.g., Markman and Ross, 2003). Simply r, word. Categorization is similarly central to

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