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Assessing the relationship between language, cognition, and culture: The Pirahã

CRLMB Distinguished Lecture Series - Presentation by Dr. Ted Gibson, Professor of Brain & Cognitive Sciences and Linguistics at the MIT

Monday, February 2, 2009 at 12:00 pm -1:30 pm
Location: Room 501, Ã山ǿ¼é Cancer Pavilion, Life Sciences Complex, 1160 Pine Avenue West

Abstract
A foundational assumption of many researchers investigating the universals of human language is that many properties of language are independent of the cultural context and the non-linguistic cognitive abilities of the(ir) speakers.Ìý But it's not clear that this assumption is warranted.Ìý Everett (2005) described the case of the Pirahã, an isolated Amazonian tribe who are allegedly characterized by very unusual linguistic and non-linguistic cognitive properties (e.g., finite language, lack of words for numbers and colors, lack of quantifiers).Ìý Critically, he argued that all these properties can be accounted for by a general cultural constraint against abstraction.Ìý The validity of these claims remains an open question.Ìý I will report some initial results from a set of experiments I conducted in collaboration with Mike Frank and Ev Fedorenko during a visit to a Pirahã village in 2007 in order to test some of these claims.

Followed by:

The nature of working memory resources underlying language processing

CRLMB Distinguished Lecture Series - Presentation by Dr. EvÌý Fedorenko, postdoctoral associate at the Kanwisher Lab (McGovern Institute for Brain Research) at MIT

Monday, February 2, 2009 at 1:30 pm -2:30 pm
Location: Location: Room 501, Ã山ǿ¼é Cancer Pavilion, Life Sciences Complex, 1160 Pine Avenue West

Abstract
A fundamental question in cognitive science concerns the extent to which our mind consists of independent cognitive modules — subserved by highly specialized neural structures — dedicated to specific cognitive functions.Ìý I investigate this question with regard to the working memory resources underlying language processing.Ìý I present a series of behavioral studies aimed at investigating the extent to which the working memory system underlying language processing is domain-specific.Ìý I argue that the results of these experiments demonstrate that at least some aspects of the working memory system used for linguistic integrations are not domain-specific, being involved in arithmetic, and possibly, musical processing.