90-Minute Symposium

090-033

Embodied Language and Cognition: Brains, Mouths, and Hands

Session Start/End Time:

Sunday, Feb 15, 2009, 10:30 AM -12:00 PM

HRC Columbus CD

How people think, communicate, and interact with each other is shaped in part by biological heritage and its evolution. This symposium will explore aspects of the emerging area of embodied language and cognition. Building on a long tradition of understanding the biological bases of language, the panel will focus on three contemporary approaches in which aspects of physicality are crucial to both methodology and theory. Presentations will span the range of physiological space, from the neural level of the functional organization of speech processing in the brain, through the biomechanical and gestural levels of speech articulation, signing, and situated communicative interactions. A focus of the symposium will be on exploring how a consideration of embodiment is related to methodological, theoretical, and technological advances in the behavioral and social sciences. The first approach will illustrate how neurolinguistics is moving beyond the descriptive nature of the state of the art by combining computational and biological perspectives. A recent approach to understanding linguistic universals will describe how syllable structure is grounded in dynamics, in particular, the coordinated timing of multiple body actions. Finally, a novel suggestion will be presented in the area of human cognition indicating that the body, via gesture, plays a role not only in solidifying old ideas, but also in creating new ones.

Organized by:

Philip Rubin, Haskins Laboratories, New Haven, CT

Presentations:

  Symposium Organizer--Philip Rubin, Haskins Laboratories, New Haven, CT

  A Brain's-Eye View on Language: Neurobiological Foundations of Comprehension--David Poeppel, University of Maryland, College Park, MD

  An Embodied Theory of Syllabic Organization of Speech--Louis Goldstein, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA

  Using Our Bodies To Change Our Minds--Susan Goldin-Meadow, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL