Literacy shapes thought: the case of event representation in different cultures

There has been a lively debate whether conceptual representations of actions or scenes follow a left-to-right spatial transient when participants depict such events or scenes. It was even suggested that conceptualizing the agent on the left side represents a universal. We review the current literature with an emphasis on event representation and on cross-cultural studies. While there is quite some evidence for spatial bias for representations of events and scenes in diverse cultures, their extent and direction depend on task demands, one‘s native language, and importantly, on reading and writing direction. Whether transients arise only in subject-verb-object languages, due to their linear sentential position of event participants, is still an open issue. We investigated a group of illiterate speakers of Yucatec Maya, a language with a predominant verb-object-subject structure. They were compared to illiterate native speakers of Spanish. Neither group displayed a spatial transient. Given the current literature, we argue that learning to read and write has a strong impact on representations of actions and scenes. Thus, while it is still under debate whether language shapes thought, there is firm evidence that literacy does

Categorization through Sensory Codes

The central premise of concept empiricism is the denial of unique cognitive mental representations. The negative thesis applies as well to classic empiricists as it does to current ones. John Locke’s (1690) refusal to accept ‘abstract ideas’ is one way of denying unique and distinct cognitive representations. Jesse J. Prinz’s (2002) multi-modality hypothesis, according to which cognition functions on a multi-sensory code instead of a central ‘amodal’ one, is another. Both empiricist models have a common foil in a theory that posits one unique kind of ‘intellectualist’ mental representation to account for human cognitive achievements. For Locke, it was Descartes’ abstract mental medium for clear and distinct ideas and for Prinz it is Jerry Fodor’s Language of Thought. In this paper, I explore the empiricists’ denial of unique cognitive representations and argue that both Locke’s and Prinz’s theories privilege a unique representational medium – a spatial ‘code.’ As such, this tacit assumption does not entail that cognition runs on a unique medium. It does not lead to a ‘common code rationalism,’ to use Prinz’s terms, or support computational theories of the mind that privilege innate linguistic structures over sensory ones. To incorporate the idea of a spatial code more smoothly within empiricist intellectual resources, I interpret it through Lakoff’s experientialist account of categorical cognition. Through Lakoff’s embodied experientialist account – embodied neo-empiricism – the spatiality of cognition becomes founded in a broader and more plausible sensory matrix. I further suggest that Lakoff’s ideas on and use of spatial codes can be given a largely externalist reading. Lakoff’s space is not a unique cognitive one. This way, current neo-empiricism can be saved from assuming any unique internal posits including a language of thought

Asymmetrical Interference Effects Between Two-Dimensional Geometric Shapes and Their Corresponding Shape Words

Nativists have postulated fundamental geometric knowledge that predates linguistic and symbolic thought. Central to these claims is the proposal for an isolated cognitive system dedicated to processing geometric information. Testing such hypotheses presents challenges due to difficulties in eliminating the combination of geometric and non-geometric information through language. We present evidence using a modified matching interference paradigm that an incongruent shape word interferes with identifying a two-dimensional geometric shape, but an incongruent two-dimensional geometric shape does not interfere with identifying a shape word. This asymmetry in interference effects between two-dimensional geometric shapes and their corresponding shape words suggests that shape words activate spatial representations of shapes but shapes do not activate linguistic representations of shape words. These results appear consistent with hypotheses concerning a cognitive system dedicated to processing geometric information isolated from linguistic processing and provide evidence consistent with hypotheses concerning knowledge of geometric properties of space that predates linguistic and symbolic thought

How Do Gestures Influence Thinking and Speaking? The Gesture-for-Conceptualization Hypothesis.

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TEST: A Tropic, Embodied, and Situated Theory of Cognition

TEST is a novel taxonomy of knowledge representations based on three distinct hierarchically organized representational features: Tropism, Embodiment, and Situatedness. Tropic representational features reflect constraints of the physical world on the agent’s ability to form, reactivate, and enrich embodied (i.e., resulting from the agent’s bodily constraints) conceptual representations embedded in situated contexts. The proposed hierarchy entails that representations can, in principle, have tropic features without necessarily having situated and/or embodied features. On the other hand, representations that are situated and/or embodied are likely to be simultaneously tropic. Hence while we propose tropism as the most general term, the hierarchical relationship between embodiment and situatedness is more on a par, such that the dominance of one component over the other relies on the distinction between offline storage vs. online generation as well as on representation-specific properties

Perceptual Pluralism

Perceptual systems respond to proximal stimuli by forming mental representations of distal stimuli. A central goal for the philosophy of perception is to characterize the representations delivered by perceptual systems. It may be that all perceptual representations are in some way proprietarily perceptual and differ from the representational format of thought (Dretske 1981; Carey 2009; Burge 2010; Block ms.). Or it may instead be that perception and cognition always trade in the same code (Prinz 2002; Pylyshyn 2003). This paper rejects both approaches in favor of perceptual pluralism, the thesis that perception delivers a multiplicity of representational formats, some proprietary and some shared with cognition. The argument for perceptual pluralism marshals a wide array of empirical evidence in favor of iconic (i.e., image-like, analog) representations in perception as well as discursive (i.e., language-like, digital) perceptual object representations

A Role for the prefrontal cortex in supporting singular demonstrative reference

One of the most pressing questions concerning singular demonstrative mental contents is what makes their content singular: that is to say, what makes it the case that individual objects are the representata of these mental states. Many philosophers have required sophisticated intellectual capacities for singular content to be possible, such as the possession of an elaborate scheme of space and time. A more recent reaction to this strategy proposes to account for singular content solely on the basis of empirical models of visual processing. We believe both sides make good points, and offer an intermediate way of looking into singular content. Our suggestion is that singular content may be traced to psychological capacities to form flexible, abstract representations in the prefrontal cortex. This allows them to be sustained for increasingly longer periods of time and extrapolated beyond the context of perception, thus going beyond lowlevel sensory representations while also falling short of more sophisticated intellectual abilities

The nature of gestures’ beneficial role in spatial problem solving

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