Brain Behaviour Interfaces In Linguistic Communication

This eBook is a collection of articles from a Frontiers Research Topic. Frontiers Research Topics are very popular trademarks of the Frontiers Journals Series: they are collections of at least ten articles, all centered on a particular subject. With their unique mix of varied contributions from Original Research to Review Articles, Frontiers Research Topics unify the most influential researchers, the latest key findings and historical advances in a hot research area! Find out more on how to host your own Frontiers Research Topic or contribute to one as an author by contacting the Frontiers Editorial Office: frontiersin.org/about/contact.

Communication and Affect: Language and Thought is a collection of papers presented at the second symposium on Communication and Affect held at Erindale College, University of Toronto, in March 1972. This volume contains a series of papers dealing with neobehavioristic approach to language and thought. The individual papers represent a broad spectrum of topics that are linked by their common neobehavioristic methodology and by their subject matter dealing with human verbal and symbolic behavior. Topics discussed in the compendium include the linguistic concept of marked and unmarked attributes and its relation to cognitive structure and affect; a comparison of the pictorial and verbal modes of representing information; the evolution of human cognition; empirical and theoretical approaches to the question of localization of language functions in the human brain; and the nature of implicit communications in experimental situations. Psychologists, behavioral scientists, linguists, and researchers in the field of human communication will find the book invaluable.

Cognitive mechanisms underlying linguistic communication do not only rely upon retrieval and processing of linguistic information; they also involve constant updating and organizing of this linguistic information in relation with other, more general, cognitive mechanisms. Some existing theoretical models assume such a tight interactive link between domain-general and domain-specific sources of information in the cognitive organization of the linguistic faculty and during language use. Domain-specific constraints may include, for example, grammatical as well as lexical and pragmatic knowledge. Domain-general constraints comprise processing limitations imposed by the cognitive mechanisms of memory, attention, learning, and social interaction. However, much of the existing research tends to focus on one or the other of the aforementioned areas, while integrative accounts are still rather sparse at present. Therefore, the aim of this Research Topic of Frontiers in Cognition is to bring together researchers who, with in their respective research fields and by using different methodologies, represent integrative approaches to the study of language. We invite submissions from a wide range of interrelated areas of research: cognitive architectures of language, aspects of language processing, linguistic development, bilingualism, language embodiment, neuropsychology of linguistic function, among others. We would like to solicit original research contributions discussing behavioral, neurophysiological, and computational evidence as well as papers on methodological and/or theoretical aspects of the interplay between linguistic and non-linguistic cognitive processes.

How did humans evolve biologically so that our brains and social interactions could support language processes, and how did cultural evolution lead to the invention of languages (signed as well as spoken)? This book addresses these questions through comparative (neuro)primatology – comparative study of brain, behavior and communication in monkeys, apes and humans – and an EvoDevoSocio framework for approaching biological and cultural evolution within a shared perspective. Each chapter provides an authoritative yet accessible review from a different discipline: linguistics (evolutionary, computational and neuro), archeology and neuroarcheology, macaque neurophysiology, comparative neuroanatomy, primate behavior, and developmental studies. These diverse perspectives are unified by having each chapter close with a section on its implications for creating a new road map for multidisciplinary research. These implications include assessment of the pluses and minuses of the Mirror System Hypothesis as an “old” road map. The cumulative road map is then presented in the concluding chapter. Originally published as a special issue of Interaction Studies 19:1/2 (2018).

". . . advances aggressively through pertinent and lively argument. . . . There are numerous brief and incisive responses to important philosophers of language (Sellars, Quine, Dummett, Putnam, Chomsky, Ziff) on issues of major significance and no little controversy." -- Margaret Urban Coyne, International Philosophical Quarterly

A unique overview of the human language faculty at all levels of organization. Language is not only one of the most complex cognitive functions that we command, it is also the aspect of the mind that makes us uniquely human. Research suggests that the human brain exhibits a language readiness not found in the brains of other species. This volume brings together contributions from a range of fields to examine humans' language capacity from multiple perspectives, analyzing it at genetic, neurobiological, psychological, and linguistic levels. In recent decades, advances in computational modeling, neuroimaging, and genetic sequencing have made possible new approaches to the study of language, and the contributors draw on these developments. The book examines cognitive architectures, investigating the functional organization of the major language skills; learning and development trajectories, summarizing the current understanding of the steps and neurocognitive mechanisms in language processing; evolutionary and other preconditions for communication by means of natural language; computational tools for modeling language; cognitive neuroscientific methods that allow observations of the human brain in action, including fMRI, EEG/MEG, and others; the neural infrastructure of language capacity; the genome's role in building and maintaining the language-ready brain; and insights from studying such language-relevant behaviors in nonhuman animals as birdsong and primate vocalization. Section editors Christian F. Beckmann, Carel ten Cate, Simon E. Fisher, Peter Hagoort, Evan Kidd, Stephen C. Levinson, James M. McQueen, Antje S. Meyer, David Poeppel, Caroline F. Rowland, Constance Scharff, Ivan Toni, Willem Zuidema