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Interactions Between Language, Thought, and Perception: Cognitive and Neural Perspectives Cognitive Neuropsychology ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/pcgn20 Interactions between language, thought, and perception: Cognitive and neural perspectives Bradford Z. Mahon & David Kemmerer To cite this article: Bradford Z. Mahon & David Kemmerer (2020) Interactions between language, thought, and perception: Cognitive and neural perspectives, Cognitive Neuropsychology, 37:5-6, 235-240, DOI: 10.1080/02643294.2020.1829578 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/02643294.2020.1829578 Published online: 10 Nov 2020. Submit your article to this journal View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=pcgn20 COGNITIVE NEUROPSYCHOLOGY 2020, VOL. 37, NOS. 5–6, 235–240 https://doi.org/10.1080/02643294.2020.1829578 Interactions between language, thought, and perception: Cognitive and neural perspectives Bradford Z. Mahon a,b,c and David Kemmererd,e aDepartment of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA; bDepartment of Neurosurgery, University of Rochester Medical Center, Rochester, NY, USA; cCarnegie Mellon Neuroscience Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA; dDepartment of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA; eDepartment of Psychological Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY The role that language plays in shaping non-linguistic cognitive and perceptual systems has been Received 15 September 2020 the subject of much theoretical and experimental attention over the past half-century. Revised 23 September 2020 Understanding how language interacts with non-linguistic systems can provide insight into Accepted 24 September broader constraints on cognitive and brain organization. The papers that form this volume 2020 fl investigate various ways in which linguistic structure can interact with and in uence how KEYWORDS speakers think about and perceive the world, and the related issue of the constraints that in Language; perception; turn shape linguistic representations. These theoretical and empirical contributions support Sapir–Whorf; linguistic deeper understanding of the interactions between language, thought, and perception, and relativity; semantic; motivate new approaches for developing directional predictions at both the neural and embodied cognition cognitive levels. We start by laying out two guard-rails for this volume: cognitive systems shape semantic distinctions that First, there are a range of observations that collec- are linguistically coded. Current discussions, as exem- tively indicate that sophisticated thought and percep- plified by the papers in this volume, wrestle with the tion can occur in the absence of language, or at least granular questions of exactly which aspects of linguis- in the context of “impoverished” language (for review tic structure interact with non-linguistic processes, and discussion, see (Kemmerer, 2019)): (i) Pre-linguis- and the conditions under which such interactions tic infants have intentions and goals and process occur. complex perceptual events for meaning and remem- ber those events; (ii) nonhuman animals can rep- Linguistic diversity and linguistic universals resent abstractions over perceptual categories in ways that are formally equivalent to humans; and In order to demonstrate that perception or thought is (iii) many perceptual and cognitive abilities can be affected by linguistic structure, it is necessary to ident- largely or entirely intact in persons with aphasia due ify and isolate an aspect of linguistic structure that to acquired brain injury. Second, the live and interest- varies in theoretically interesting ways across ing thesis for how language may affect thought and different perceivers/thinkers, or over time within a perception is not that language affects speakers’ phe- speaker. This is an epistemic constraint, and of nomenology, or even that it is constitutive of the “core course not unique to this area of research; there are processes” of perception. Rather, the issues concern always asymmetries between certain types of theor- the conditions under which linguistic distinctions etical questions and the types of empirical evidence shape how perceptual and conceptual systems that bear on those questions. One practical impli- package their outputs for subsequent processing, cation is that it can be difficult to provide positive evi- which non-linguistic processes are affected by linguis- dence from linguistic universals for the thesis that tic structure, and how non-linguistic perceptual and language affects thought or perception. On the CONTACT Bradford Z. Mahon [email protected] Carnegie Mellon University, 327E Baker Hall, 5000 Forbes Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group 236 B. Z. MAHON AND D. KEMMERER other hand, if one can identify aspects of language A In a similar vein, Flecken and van Bergen (Flecken & that are different in interesting ways from language B, van Bergen, 2019) studied a linguistic contrast then one can test for traces of that difference on non- between Dutch and English. In Dutch, posture verbs linguistic processing in speakers of languages A and B are used to describe the static locations of objects – (or over time for a multilingual speaker). In addition, for instance, that the bottle stands/lies on the table. and within a given language, a certain linguistic struc- In English it is not obligatory to use such posture ture or construction may be used by a speaker in one verbs (i.e., “The bottle is on the table”), but such context but not in another context, providing an posture verbs are also acceptable. In this way, the opportunity to study the effect of that linguistic struc- authors identify a linguistic contrast that differs prob- ture on nonlinguistic processing. For these reasons, abilistically across languages. The authors used a non- large and productive branches of the literature verbal picture-matching task to evaluate whether focus on linguistic diversity, and on the context- Dutch speakers are more sensitive to a mismatch dependence of how certain linguistic structures are between a visual stimulus and the perceptual expec- used. tation established by the linguistic expression. The As an example, in languages such as Greek, it is not authors found, using behavioural measures and EEG, typical to code the manner of an action, while in that a similar pattern emerged for Dutch and English coding manner is typical. In English, one English speakers, indicating a lack of evidence for says: The girl ran into the house. In Greek, one says the hypothesis that probabilistic differences in the lin- (something like): The girl entered the house guistic encoding of object posture affect the percep- running, where “running” can be dropped. That con- tion of those objects (for related work in the domain trast in linguistic coding of motion events has been of sign language, see Navarrete et al., 2020). leveraged to test whether linguistic processes modu- Another approach, taken by Everett (2019), turns late non-linguistic processing. Skordos and col- the issue of linguistic diversity around and tests leagues (Skordos et al., 2019) investigated whether whether, for a cognitive ability that is believed to be such differences between English and Greek affect universal, there is a corresponding linguistic universal. participants’ memory of previously seen motion Everett summarizes prior work indicating that the events. When English and Greek speakers watched human perceptual system is innately biased to events in silence there were no effects of language process magnitudes of “1”, “ 2”, and “3” through dedi- on memory. Rather, speakers of English and Greek cated constrained processes. There is a wealth of evi- both remembered paths of motion more accurately dence – cross-culturally, comparatively, and than manners of motion. When the experiment was developmentally – to suggest humans have basic rerun in a way that the perception of the events numerical competencies for representing small sets was accompanied by hearing a path or a manner exactly (for review, see for instance, Cantlon, 2018). verb, there was again a lack of an interaction: for The question is whether such a cognitive universal, both groups of speakers, hearing path verbs in the domain of numerosity, has resulted in consist- reduced memory for manners of motion, but ent structure across the world’s languages in how hearing manner verbs did not reduce memory for those numbers are linguistically coded. Everett paths of motion. Such findings indicate that there argues there is only slim evidence for innate con- are strong biases in how events are remembered straints on how the world’s languages represent the that can be resilient to linguistic variance in how numbers 1, 2, and 3. Franzon and colleagues (2020), such information is packaged (for different findings in a commentary on Everett (2019), describe a see (Filipović, 2011)). Skordos and colleagues complex interaction between non-linguistic numeri- argued their findings suggest that participants are cal systems, structural properties of communication not encoding the events linguistically and are thus systems, and number morphology. Franzon and col- not using linguistic vehicles to facilitate subsequent leagues argue that accounts based only on cultural memory – an important conclusion regarding the or experiential
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