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Language Modularity Psychology (Fodor 1983) electrified the still- young field of cognitive psychology. Fodor’s Lindsay N. Harris and Iwona Lech modularity, which depicts modules as hardwired Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL, USA information processing systems, appealed to a generation of psychologists who were intent on peering into the behaviorists’“black box” of the Synonyms and were hungry for technical language to describe what they had begun to find there. The Domain specificity; Functional specialization theory’s impact on the cognitive and language sciences has been broad, deep, and enduring.

Definition Fodor’s Modularity of Mind The notion that human cognitive architecture includes a module for language, i.e., an innate The idea of a modular mind emerged from system of neural tissue that responds only to Fodor’s philosophical view of the as a com- speech. puter. Fodor argues that innate cognitive modules, or “input systems,” are necessary to interpret information encountered “at the surfaces (as it Introduction were) of the organism” (Fodor 1983, p. 42) such that it is comprehensible by the “central systems” The concept of a modularized mind, constructed of the brain, where conscious, higher-order cog- of distinct units devoted to particular psychologi- nitive processes occur. Although he sidesteps pro- cal functions, can be traced back at least to Gall, viding a detailed list of candidate modules, Fodor the father of the nineteenth-century . In does grant that there are likely to be modules for at the twentieth century, a version of modularity least “the perceptual systems plus language” (termed “the new organology” by detractors) (emphasis original; Fodor 1983, p. 44). He argues was advocated by Chomsky, who speculated that that a module for language interpretation is as some sort of language module would be necessary valuable to humanity as a module for perception to support his universal grammar (e.g., Chomsky of light or odor on the grounds that all of these 1980). Today modularity is most closely identi- hypothesized input systems serve the function of fied with , whose publication in 1983 generating hypotheses about “the way that the of The Modularity of Mind: An Essay on Faculty world is” (p. 45) for use by higher-order cognitive

# Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016 T.K. Shackelford, V.A. Weekes-Shackelford (eds.), Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_3333-1 2 Language Modularity systems. Processing the speech of others, Fodor Finally, the concept of “computer” has points out, is a generally reliable way of obtaining changed considerably since the publication of information about the world –“In the root case, Modularity of Mind. In the past 30 years, connec- the convention is that we say of x that it is F only if tionist networks that reliably simulate many x is F ” (p. 45) – and thus a module for speech aspects of cognition by exploiting parallel distrib- processing is adaptive. uted processing and spreading activation of infor- In Modularity of Mind, Fodor provides nine mation have largely eclipsed the serial, symbol- criteria that he concludes are useful in identifying reading devices on which Fodor modeled his view a module, two of which have received outsized of the mind. If alternative models of the computer attention by both supporters and critics of his had been available in the 1970s and early 1980s, thesis: domain specificity and informational Fodor could have perhaps conceived of a different encapsulation. Modules are domain specificin architecture of the mind that is nonetheless com- that they respond only to a particular stimulus putational (cf. Katz 2014). domain, for example, the purported language module responds to speech, but not to nonspeech auditory stimuli. Modules are informationally Reconceptualizing Modularity encapsulated in that they are autonomous, i.e., they do not interact with central systems or with However, the modularity thesis might remain via- each other. The primary implication of encapsula- ble if one is willing to accept a looser definition of tion for the language module is that prior knowl- a module. The encapsulation requirement now edge or beliefs – that is, top-down information seems fairly untenable, but the same is not neces- flow – will not interfere with speech perception. sarily true of the domain-specificity requirement. Fodor dismisses evidence of top-down influences It is well established that there are certain areas of on language comprehension, such as the ability to the brain, and networks of these areas, that are understand acoustically degraded speech, or the reliably involved in language processing (e.g., phoneme-restoration effect, as post-perceptual Fedorenko 2014). Thus, cognitive psychologists (in the case of the former) or as intramodular and neuroscientists almost universally allow that flow (in the case of the latter). there is functional specialization for language. The modularity thesis has become unfashion- (The terms “domain specific” and “functionally able among cognitive psychologists in recent specialized” are used interchangeably here, years (“I am well aware of efforts to debunk this although others have differentiated them.) view, the arguments raised toward that end, and Of those who are willing to declare the lan- the disfavor into which a modular view of the guage network a module, its provenance is still a mind has fallen,” comments Curtiss (2013, matter of serious contention. A spectrum of think- p. 90) in a recent defense of modularity), for a ing on the matter stretches from strong nativism number of reasons. For one, the double dissocia- on one end to complete emgergentism on the tions between language skill and general cogni- other. Nativists such as Curtiss, whose doctoral tive abilities in lesion patients and individuals dissertation examined the famed case of Genie, with genetic syndromes that are predicted by a point to differential activation patterns in response language module segregated from other neural to speech versus other acoustic stimuli in the tissue have proved elusive (e.g., Stojanovik of infants as evidence that neural speech 2014; although see Barrett and Kurzban 2006, systems are hardwired (Curtiss 2013). for an account of the unlikelihood of finding per- Emergentists, meanwhile, are highly dismissive fect dissociations even in a completely modular of the notion that a “blueprint” of the mental system). Additionally, advances in neuroimaging structures that will develop in an individual is in the past 20 years have failed to reveal spatially genetically programmed. Karmiloff-Smith or connectively “encapsulated” tissue for lan- (1992) argues that modules are formed wholly guage or, for that matter, anything else. through interactions with the environment, and Language Modularity 3

Barrett and Kurzban (2006) provide an - nearly 25 years after functional magnetic reso- ary mechanism for their emergence: natural selec- nance imaging was first used to watch human tion has provided humans with genes that allow brains at work, the debate is far from settled. the brain to functionally specialize in response to Modern conceptualizations of modularity are stimuli and environments that have been reliably strongly altered from the one Fodor proposed, encountered across human history. It follows that but the usefulness of the construct for framing “if the normal environment of development is central questions in the study of human cognition changed, developmental outcomes might be dif- has ensured its survival to the present day. ferent” (Barrett and Kurzban 2006, p. 638). Thus, for the nativist, Genie’s brain was denied the linguistic input required at the right moment in Cross-References development to rouse its innate language module; for the emergentist, because Genie was denied ▶ Evidence of Brain Modularity linguistic input at the right moment in develop- ▶ Language Preadaptations ment, the gene-by-environment calculus that ▶ Linguistic Evolution causes the language module to emerge under nor- ▶ Nativism mal circumstances was disrupted, and no such ▶ Neurobiology of Language module ever formed. Yet another view departs ▶ Universal Grammar from the nativist-emergentist spectrum altogether, and has languages evolving to fit brains, rather than the other way around (Christiansen and References Chater 2008). This view puts any biological adap- tation for language as recent, minimal, and falling Barrett, H. C., & Kurzban, R. (2006). Modularity in cog- far short of anything that could be considered a nition: Framing the debate. , 113(3), 628. module, even in a relaxed sense of the term. Chomsky, N. (1980). Rules and representations. New York: Columbia University Press. Christiansen, M. H., & Chater, N. (2008). Language as Conclusion shaped by the brain. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 31(05), 489–509. Curtiss, S. (2013). Revisiting modularity: Using language Despite the increasing skepticism with which the as a window to the mind. In M. Piatelli-Palmarini & modularity thesis has been viewed in certain aca- R. C. Berwick (Eds.), Rich languages from poor inputs – demic circles in the past two decades, it is by no (pp. 68 90). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fedorenko, E. (2014). The role of domain-general cogni- means obsolete. It is a touchstone for many evo- tive control in language comprehension. Frontiers in lutionary psychologists, who feel that Fodor was Psychology, 5, 335. in fact too conservative when he denied modular- Fodor, J. A. (1983). The modularity of mind: An essay on ity to the central systems of the brain. They posit faculty psychology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Karmiloff-Smith, A. (1992). Beyond modularity. Cam- instead that the brain is massively modular, bridge, MA: MIT Press. because a large number of functionally special- Katz, M. (2014). Jerry Fodor and the representational the- ized cognitive systems should be more flexible in ory of mind. In A. Bailey (Ed.), : – the face of a changing environment than a small The key thinkers (pp. 125 138). London: Bloomsbury. Stojanovik, V. (2014). Language in genetic syndromes and number of functionally general systems (e.g., cognitive modularity. In L. Cummings (Ed.), The Cam- Tooby and Cosmides 1992; Barrett and Kurzban bridge handbook of communication disorders 2006). (pp. 541–558). Cambridge: Cambridge University When Modularity of Mind was first published, Press. Tooby, J., & Cosmides, L. (1992). The psychological foun- one might have assumed that the invention of a dations of culture. In J. H. Barkow, L. Cosmides, & noninvasive technology for watching a brain in J. Tooby (Eds.), : Evolutionary psy- action would go a long way toward settling the chology and the generation of culture (pp. 19–136). question of the validity of Fodor’s theory. Today, New York: Oxford University Press.