Teacher cognition in language teaching: A review of research on what language teachers think, know, believe, and do

This paper reviews a selection of research from the field of foreign and second language teaching into what is referred to here as teacher cognition – what teachers think, know, and believe and the relationships of these mental constructs to what teachers do in the language teaching classroom. Within a framework suggested by more general mainstream educational research on teacher cognition, language teacher cognition is here discussed with reference to three main themes: (1) cognition and prior language learning experience, (2) cognition and teacher education, and (3) cognition and classroom practice. In addition, the findings of studies into two specific curricular areas in language teaching which have been examined by teacher cognition – grammar teaching and literacy – are discussed. This review indicates that, while the study of teacher cognition has established itself on the research agenda in the field of language teaching and provided valuable insight into the mental lives of language teachers, a clear sense of unity is lacking in the work and there are several major issues in language teaching which have yet to be explored from the perspective of teacher cognition

The role of language, social cognition, and social skill in the functional social outcomes of young adolescents with and without a history of SLI

Social skill and language are known to relate, not least in the example of those with specific language impairment (SLI). However, most of the research examining this trend has been conducted on young primary school age children and the nature of the relationships is unclear. Furthermore, little is known about which young people in general have social difficulties and whether language, social cognition, and social skills are directly associated at this age. In this study, a large cohort made up of young people with a history of SLI (N = 134) and a typically developing (TD) group (N = 124) of the same age were followed up in their final year of compulsory schooling (aged 16). Language, social cognition, social skills, and functional social outcomes (friendships and levels of social activity) were assessed using tasks and questionnaires. Modest associations were found between social cognition, language, and social behaviours, the strongest being between language and social cognition. Regression analyses showed that as a combined group, the adolescents' functional social outcomes were most associated with expressive language, social skill, and social cognitive ability. However, the patterns differed when the groups were analysed separately, with social cognition playing more of a role for those with SLI. These findings suggest that poor language may play a complex role in adolescents' social development

‘Putting apes (body and language) together again’, a review article of Savage-Rumbaugh, S., Taylor, T. J., and Shanker, S. G. Apes, Language, and the Human Mind (Oxford: 1999) and Clark, A. Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again (MIT: 1997)

It is argued that the account of Savage-Rumbaugh’s ape language research in Savage-Rumbaugh, Shanker and Taylor (1998. Apes, Language and the Human Mind. Oxford University Press, Oxford) is profitably read in the terms of the theoretical perspective developed in Clark (1997. Being There, Putting Brain, Body and World Together Again. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA). The former work details some striking results concerning chimpanzee and bonobo subjects, trained to make use of keyboards containing ‘lexigram’ symbols. The authors, though, make heavy going of a critique of what they take to be standard approaches to understanding language and cognition in animals, and fail to offer a worthwhile theoretical position from which to make sense of their own data. It is suggested that the achievements of Savage-Rumbaugh’s non-human subjects suggest that language ability need not be explained by reference to specialised brain capacities. The contribution made by Clark’s work is to show the range of ways in which cognition exploits bodily and environmental resources. This model of ‘distributed’ cognition helps makes sense of the lexigram activity of Savage-Rumbaugh’s subjects, and points to a re-evaluation of the language behaviour of humans

Mass and count in language and cognition : some evidence from language comprehension

In linguistics and the philosophy of language, the mass/count distinction has traditionally been regarded as a bi-partition on the nominal domain, where typical instances are nouns like "beef" (mass) vs."cow" (count). In the present paper, we argue that this partition reveals a system that is based on both syntactic features and conceptual features, and present experimental evidence suggesting that the discrimination of the two kinds of features has a psychological reality

Language and Cognition

Interaction between language and cognition remains an unsolved scientific problem. What are the differences in neural mechanisms of language and cognition? Why do children acquire language by the age of six, while taking a lifetime to acquire cognition? What is the role of language and cognition in thinking? Is abstract cognition possible without language? Is language just a communication device, or is it fundamental in developing thoughts? Why are there no animals with human thinking but without human language? Combinations even among 100 words and 100 objects (multiple words can represent multiple objects) exceed the number of all the particles in the Universe, and it seems that no amount of experience would suffice to learn these associations. How does human brain overcome this difficulty

Did language give us numbers? : Symbolic thinking and the emergence of systematic numerical cognition

What role does language play in the development of numerical cognition? In the present paper I argue that the evolution of symbolic thinking (as a basis for language) laid the grounds for the emergence of a systematic concept of number. This concept is grounded in the notion of an infinite sequence and encompasses number assignments that can focus on cardinal aspects ("three pencils"), ordinal aspects ("the third runner"), and even nominal aspects ("bus #3"). I show that these number assignments are based on a specific association of relational structures, and that it is the human language faculty that provides a cognitive paradigm for such an association, suggesting that language played a pivotal role in the evolution of systematic numerical cognition

Language as a disruptive technology: Abstract concepts, embodiment and the flexible mind

A growing body of evidence suggests that cognition is embodied and grounded. Abstract concepts, though, remain a significant theoretical chal- lenge. A number of researchers have proposed that language makes an important contribution to our capacity to acquire and employ concepts, particularly abstract ones. In this essay, I critically examine this suggestion and ultimately defend a version of it. I argue that a successful account of how language augments cognition should emphasize its symbolic properties and incorporate a view of embodiment that recognizes the flexible, multi- modal and task-related nature of action, emotion and perception systems. On this view, language is an ontogenetically disruptive cognitive technology that expands our conceptual reach

Neural blackboard architectures of combinatorial structures in cognition

Human cognition is unique in the way in which it relies on combinatorial (or compositional) structures. Language provides ample evidence for the existence of combinatorial structures, but they can also be found in visual cognition. To understand the neural basis of human cognition, it is therefore essential to understand how combinatorial structures can be instantiated in neural terms. In his recent book on the foundations of language, Jackendoff described four fundamental problems for a neural instantiation of combinatorial structures: the massiveness of the binding problem, the problem of 2, the problem of variables and the transformation of combinatorial structures from working memory to long-term memory. This paper aims to show that these problems can be solved by means of neural ‘blackboard’ architectures. For this purpose, a neural blackboard architecture for sentence structure is presented. In this architecture, neural structures that encode for words are temporarily bound in a manner that preserves the structure of the sentence. It is shown that the architecture solves the four problems presented by Jackendoff. The ability of the architecture to instantiate sentence structures is illustrated with examples of sentence complexity observed in human language performance. Similarities exist between the architecture for sentence structure and blackboard architectures for combinatorial structures in visual cognition, derived from the structure of the visual cortex. These architectures are briefly discussed, together with an example of a combinatorial structure in which the blackboard architectures for language and vision are combined. In this way, the architecture for language is grounded in perception

Spring School on Language, Music, and Cognition: Organizing Events in Time

The interdisciplinary spring school “Language, music, and cognition: Organizing events in time” was held from February 26 to March 2, 2018 at the Institute of Musicology of the University of Cologne. Language, speech, and music as events in time were explored from different perspectives including evolutionary biology, social cognition, developmental psychology, cognitive neuroscience of speech, language, and communication, as well as computational and biological approaches to language and music. There were 10 lectures, 4 workshops, and 1 student poster session. Overall, the spring school investigated language and music as neurocognitive systems and focused on a mechanistic approach exploring the neural substrates underlying musical, linguistic, social, and emotional processes and behaviors. In particular, researchers approached questions concerning cognitive processes, computational procedures, and neural mechanisms underlying the temporal organization of language and music, mainly from two perspectives: one was concerned with syntax or structural representations of language and music as neurocognitive systems (i.e., an intrapersonal perspective), while the other emphasized social interaction and emotions in their communicative function (i.e., an interpersonal perspective). The spring school not only acted as a platform for knowledge transfer and exchange but also generated a number of important research questions as challenges for future investigations