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Sweet Anticipation: Music and the Psychology of Expectation
, 2006
"... term sweet anticipation is defined as “the positive feelings that arise from conscious thought about some future event”. As such, the term constitutes a rather strange choice of title for a book that focuses to a large extent on unconscious processes involved in musical expectation. Presumably, the ..."
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term sweet anticipation is defined as “the positive feelings that arise from conscious thought about some future event”. As such, the term constitutes a rather strange choice of title for a book that focuses to a large extent on unconscious processes involved in musical expectation. Presumably, the intention was to place emphasis on “positive feelings ” since this account differs from most written by researchers in music cognition in terms of the prominence it gives to music’s ability to invoke pleasure. However, Huron’s approach is distinctive in other ways. The prominence given to psychological theories, models and methods as tools for understanding music will come as no surprise for those familiar with his field of research. But the emphasis on taking subjective musical experience seriously, modelling music perception as a process of (statistical) learning, examining music from wide range of cultures and understanding cognition in an evolutionary context represent characteristic hallmarks of this work. We shall return to these themes in more detail later on. In a recent review of Daniel J. Levitin’s book This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession, David Huron notes the advantages brought to a field of study by having a popular champion and laments the fact that, in spite of being in its “golden age”, research in music cognition “has not been communicated beyond a small coterie of professionals ” (Huron, 2006, p. 5). It seems likely that this
Mirror neurons and the social nature of language: The neural exploitation hypothesis
- Social Neuroscience
, 2008
"... hypothesis ..."
A parallel architecture perspective on language processing
- Language, Consciousness, Culture: Essays on Mental Structure
, 2006
"... has been devoted to working out the Parallel Architecture, a framework for linguistic theory which preserves all the mentalistic and biological aspects of mainstream generative grammar (MGG) (e.g. Chomsky 1965, 1981, 1995, 2000), but which employs a theoretical technology better in tune with discove ..."
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has been devoted to working out the Parallel Architecture, a framework for linguistic theory which preserves all the mentalistic and biological aspects of mainstream generative grammar (MGG) (e.g. Chomsky 1965, 1981, 1995, 2000), but which employs a theoretical technology better in tune with discoveries of the last 30 years about linguistic structure. The present article sketches the Parallel Architecture and shows why it is preferable to the classical approach on theoretical grounds. It also shows how the Parallel Architecture lends itself to a much more direct relation between theories of linguistic structure and theories of language processing than has been possible within MGG, especially in its most recent incarnations. 1. Goals of a theory of language processing – and goals of language processing Let’s begin with some truisms that help set the scope of the problem. A theory of language processing has to explain how language users convert sounds into meanings in language perception and how they convert meanings into sounds in language production. One part of the theory has to describe what language users store in long-term memory that enables them to do this. Another part of the theory has to describe how the material
Language acquisition meets language evolution
- COGNITIVE SCIENCE 34 (2010)
, 2010
"... Recent research suggests that language evolution is a process of cultural change, in which linguistic structures are shaped through repeated cycles of learning and use by domain-general mechanisms. This paper draws out the implications of this viewpoint for understanding the problem of language acqu ..."
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Recent research suggests that language evolution is a process of cultural change, in which linguistic structures are shaped through repeated cycles of learning and use by domain-general mechanisms. This paper draws out the implications of this viewpoint for understanding the problem of language acquisition, which is cast in a new, and much more tractable, form. In essence, the child faces a problem of induction, where the objective is to coordinate with others (C-induction), rather than to model the structure of the natural world (N-induction). We argue that, of the two, C-induction is dramatically easier. More broadly, we argue that understanding the acquisition of any cultural form, whether linguistic or otherwise, during development, requires considering the corresponding question of how that cultural form arose through processes of cultural evolution. This perspective helps resolve the "logical" problem of language acquisition and has far-reaching implications for evolutionary psychology.
Educating the evolved mind: Conceptual foundations for an evolutionary educational psychology
- In J.S. Carlson & J.R. Levin (Eds.), Educating the evolved mind (pp. 1–100). Greenwich, CT: Information Age
, 2007
"... It is widely accepted that all children in modern societies will receive for-mal and extended instruction in a variety of core domains, such as mathe-matics, and at the very least they will acquire the basic skills, as in being able to read and write, necessary for employment and day-to-day living i ..."
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It is widely accepted that all children in modern societies will receive for-mal and extended instruction in a variety of core domains, such as mathe-matics, and at the very least they will acquire the basic skills, as in being able to read and write, necessary for employment and day-to-day living in these societies. Unfortunately, the instructional approaches used to achieve these goals and in fact the details of the goals themselves are points of continued and often divisive debate (Hirsch, 1996). At the very least, these debates date to Rousseau’s 1762 publication of Emile, and are framed by basic assumptions about how children learn and how adults should motivate children to engage in this learning (Rousseau, 1979). At one extreme is a child-centered approach, whereby adults should come to understand how children learn and then construct educational goals and instructional methods around children’s learning biases (e.g., McLellan & Dewey, 1895). At the other extreme is the assumption that adults should CHAPTER 1
2006: “A Theoretical Synopsis of Evolutionary Phonology”, Theoretical Linguistics
"... Phonology is the study of sound patterns of the world’s languages. In all spoken languages, we find sound patterns characterizing the composition of words and phrases. These patterns include overall properties of contras-tive sound inventories (e.g. vowel inventories, consonant inventories, tone inv ..."
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Phonology is the study of sound patterns of the world’s languages. In all spoken languages, we find sound patterns characterizing the composition of words and phrases. These patterns include overall properties of contras-tive sound inventories (e.g. vowel inventories, consonant inventories, tone inventories), as well as patterns determining the distribution of sounds or contrastive features of sounds (stress, tone, length, voicing, place of articu-lation, etc.), and their variable realization in di¤erent contexts (alterna-tions). A speaker’s implicit knowledge of these patterns is often evident in their extension to novel items and in experiments probing phonological well-formedness. This implicit knowledge – its content, formalization, and representation, – is the central focus of modern theoretical phonology, in-cluding generative phonology and many of its derivatives (natural phonol-ogy, government phonology, dependency phonology, optimality theory). However, just as important as speaker’s implicit knowledge of sound patterns are explanations for the distribution of sound patterns across at-tested spoken languages. Some sound patterns, are extremely common, while others are rare. Some examples of recurrent sound patterns involv-ing segment/feature inventories, distribution, and alternations are listed in (1). The sound patterns in (1i, iii, iv, v, viii) are exceptionless across the world’s attested spoken languages, while those in (1ii, vi, vii, ix–xii) are recurrent and frequent. Exceptionlesss patterns like (1i) are sometimes regarded as ‘linguistic universals ’ (1i), while common patterns like (1ii) are often viewed as ‘universal tendencies’.
Language evolution: A brief guide for linguists
- LINGUA
, 2007
"... For the benefit of linguists new to the field of language evolution, the author sets out the issues that need to be distinguished in any research on it. He offers a guided tour of contemporary approaches, including the ..."
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For the benefit of linguists new to the field of language evolution, the author sets out the issues that need to be distinguished in any research on it. He offers a guided tour of contemporary approaches, including the
Action verbs, argument structure constructions, and the mirror neuron system.
"... The major semantic properties of action verbs and argument structure constructions are summarized using the theoretical framework of Construction Grammar. This sets the stage for an analysis of the neuroanatomical substrates of action verbs and argument structure constructions in support of the hyp ..."
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The major semantic properties of action verbs and argument structure constructions are summarized using the theoretical framework of Construction Grammar. This sets the stage for an analysis of the neuroanatomical substrates of action verbs and argument structure constructions in support of the hypothesis that the linguistic representation of action is grounded in the mirror neuron system. The discussion is then broadened to consider the emergence of language during ontogeny and phylogeny.
Talking to oneself as a selective pressure for the emergence of language
- In
, 2006
"... Selective pressures for the evolutionary emergence of human language tend to be interpreted as social in nature, i.e., for better social communication and coordination. Using a simple neural network model of language acquisition we demonstrate that even using language for oneself, i.e., as private o ..."
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Selective pressures for the evolutionary emergence of human language tend to be interpreted as social in nature, i.e., for better social communication and coordination. Using a simple neural network model of language acquisition we demonstrate that even using language for oneself, i.e., as private or inner speech, improves an individual’s categorization of the world and, therefore, makes the individual’s behavior more adaptive. We conclude that language may have first emerged due to the advantages it confers on individual cognition, and not only for its social advantages. 1.
