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Language is not essential for the cognitive processes that underlie thought

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Language is not essential for the cognitive processes that underlie thought

#31

Post by j_bum »

Razengan wrote: post #21
fnordpiglet wrote: post #2

For those who can’t and don’t think in words this is unsurprising.

Can you count without using a "language"? Try it now: Tap your hand on the desk randomly. Can you recall how many times you did it without "saying" a sequence in your head like "1, 2, 3" or "A, B, C" etc? If yes, how far can you count? With a language it's effectively infinite. You could theoretically go up to "1 million 5 hundred 43 thousand, 2 hundred and 10" and effortlessly know what comes next.

This is highly anecdotal, but when I lift weights, I have an “intuition” about the number of reps I’ve performed without consciously counting them.

An example of this would be when I’m lifting weights with a friend and am lost in the set/focusing on mind-muscle connection, and as a result I forget to count my reps. I am usually quite accurate when I verify with my lifting partner the number of reps done/remaining.

As OP mentioned, many people have no internal speech, otherwise known as anendophasia, yet can still do everything anyone with an internal dialogue can do.

Similarly for me, I can do “mental object rotation” tasks even though I have aphantasia.

Re: Language is not essential for the cognitive processes that underlie thought

#32

Post by psychoslave »

>You can ask whether people who have these severe language impairments can perform tasks that require thinking. You can ask them to solve some math problems or to perform a social reasoning test, and all of the instructions, of course, have to be nonverbal because they can’t understand linguistic information anymore. Scientists have a lot of experience working with populations that don’t have language—studying preverbal infants or studying nonhuman animal species. So it’s definitely possible to convey instructions in a way that’s nonverbal. And the key finding from this line of work is that there are people with severe language impairments who nonetheless seem totally fine on all cognitive tasks that we’ve tested them on so far.

They should start with what is their definition of language. To me it's any mean you can use to communicate some information to someone else and they generally get a correct inference of what kind of representations and responses are expected is the definition of a language. Whether it's uttered words, a series of gestures, subtle pheromones or a slap in your face, that's all languages.

For the same reason I find extremely odd that the hypothesis that animals don't have any form of language is even considered as a serious claim in introduction.

Anyone can prove anything and its contrary about language if the term is given whatever meaning is needed for premises to match with the conclusion.

Re: Language is not essential for the cognitive processes that underlie thought

#33

Post by wizzwizz4 »

j_bum wrote: post #31
Razengan wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you count without using a "language"? Try it now: Tap your hand on the desk randomly. Can you recall how many times you did it without "saying" a sequence in your head like "1, 2, 3" or "A, B, C" etc? If yes, how far can you count? With a language it's effectively infinite. You could theoretically go up to "1 million 5 hundred 43 thousand, 2 hundred and 10" and effortlessly know what comes next.

This is highly anecdotal, but when I lift weights, I have an “intuition” about the number of reps I’ve performed without consciously counting them. An example of this would be when I’m lifting weights with a friend and am lost in the set/focusing on mind-muscle connection, and as a result I forget to count my reps. I am usually quite accurate when I verify with my lifting partner the number of reps done/remaining. As…

> I have an “intuition” about the number of reps I’ve performed without consciously counting them.

This is known as subitising.

Re: Language is not essential for the cognitive processes that underlie thought

#34

Post by dse1982 »

nickelpro wrote: post #28

As always, barely anyone reads the actual claims in the article and we're left with people opining on the title. The claims here are exceptionally limited. You don't need spoken language to do well on cognitive tests, but that has never been a subject of debate. Obviously the deaf get on fine without spoken language. People suffering from aphasia, but still capable of communication via other mechanisms, still do well…

This. Also the question is what the possible complexity of the question is that you want to convey. As long as it is rather simple it might seem realistic to argue that there is no language involved (i would argue this is wrong). But as soon as the problems get more complex, the system you need to use to communicate this question becomes more and more undeniably a form of language (i think about complexity here as things like self-referentiality which need sufficiently complex formal systems to be expressed – think what gödel is about). So this part seems more complicated than it is understood. The same goes for the brain-imaging argument. As a philosopher I have unfortunately seen even accomplished scientists in this field follow a surprisingly naive empiricist approach a lot of times – which seems to me to be the case here also.

Re: Language is not essential for the cognitive processes that underlie thought

#35

Post by saghm »

xiande04 wrote: post #26
bassrattle wrote: post #16

Is this the death of the Sapir-Whorf theory?

No. Just because words are not needed for cognitive processes, does not mean that people still can and do think in language. The properties of that language could then influence thought. This is known as the Weak Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (note "hypothesis", not "theory").

Yep, this pretty accurately describes the way of think. I have a pretty heavy inner monologue, but it's not the only way I think. I've found that words are the way I "organize" my thoughts from muddled general ideas mixed with feelings into concise ideas that I can understand and gain insights from. I often won't fully grasp the significance of an idea I have until I talk it out with someone and find a way to put it into words that distill whatever I'm thinking into a more minimal form.

Somewhat relatedly, I've started suspecting over the past few years that this is why I struggle to multitask or split my attention; while I can ruminate on several things at once, the "output" of my thinking is bottlenecked by a single stream that requires me to focus on exclusively to get a anything useful from it. Realizing this has actually helped me quite a bit in terms of being more productive because I can avoid setting myself up for failure by trying to get too much done at once and failing rather than tackling things one at a time.

Re: Language is not essential for the cognitive processes that underlie thought

#36

Post by datameta »

Razengan wrote: post #21
fnordpiglet wrote: post #2

For those who can’t and don’t think in words this is unsurprising.

Can you count without using a "language"? Try it now: Tap your hand on the desk randomly. Can you recall how many times you did it without "saying" a sequence in your head like "1, 2, 3" or "A, B, C" etc? If yes, how far can you count? With a language it's effectively infinite. You could theoretically go up to "1 million 5 hundred 43 thousand, 2 hundred and 10" and effortlessly know what comes next.

I can remember the sequence of sounds and like a delay line repeat that sequence in my head. This becomes easier the more distinguishable the taps are or the more of a cadence variability there is. But if it is a longer sequence I compress it by remembering an analogue like so: doo doo da doo da doo da da doo (reminiscent of morse code, or a kind of auditory binary). Would we consider this language? I think in the colloquial sense no, but it is essentially a machine language equivalent.

For context I have both abstract "multimedia" thought processes and hypervisor-like internal narrative depending on the nature of the experience or task.

Re: Language is not essential for the cognitive processes that underlie thought

#37

Post by 082349872349872 »

kachnuv_ocasek wrote: post #29
Razengan wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you count without using a "language"? Try it now: Tap your hand on the desk randomly. Can you recall how many times you did it without "saying" a sequence in your head like "1, 2, 3" or "A, B, C" etc? If yes, how far can you count? With a language it's effectively infinite. You could theoretically go up to "1 million 5 hundred 43 thousand, 2 hundred and 10" and effortlessly know what comes next.

Interestingly, I feel like I can "feel" small numbers (up to 4 or 5) easier than than thinking about them as objects in a language.

By feel, I can without language or counting, play mostly

  X . . X . . X . . . X . X . . .
and every so often switch out for variations, eg:

  X . . X . . X . X . . . X . . .
or

  X . . . X . . . . . X . X . . .
but I'm no good for playing polyrhythms, which many other people can do, and I believe they must also do so more by feel than by counting.

Re: Language is not essential for the cognitive processes that underlie thought

#38

Post by datameta »

j_bum wrote: post #31
Razengan wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you count without using a "language"? Try it now: Tap your hand on the desk randomly. Can you recall how many times you did it without "saying" a sequence in your head like "1, 2, 3" or "A, B, C" etc? If yes, how far can you count? With a language it's effectively infinite. You could theoretically go up to "1 million 5 hundred 43 thousand, 2 hundred and 10" and effortlessly know what comes next.

This is highly anecdotal, but when I lift weights, I have an “intuition” about the number of reps I’ve performed without consciously counting them. An example of this would be when I’m lifting weights with a friend and am lost in the set/focusing on mind-muscle connection, and as a result I forget to count my reps. I am usually quite accurate when I verify with my lifting partner the number of reps done/remaining. As…

Can you expand on your last sentence? The notion is fascinating to me.

Re: Language is not essential for the cognitive processes that underlie thought

#39

Post by jwarden »

Razengan wrote: post #21
fnordpiglet wrote: post #2

For those who can’t and don’t think in words this is unsurprising.

Can you count without using a "language"? Try it now: Tap your hand on the desk randomly. Can you recall how many times you did it without "saying" a sequence in your head like "1, 2, 3" or "A, B, C" etc? If yes, how far can you count? With a language it's effectively infinite. You could theoretically go up to "1 million 5 hundred 43 thousand, 2 hundred and 10" and effortlessly know what comes next.

I can. But I do this by visualizing the taps as a group. I don't have to label them with a number. I can see them in my mind, thus recalling the taps. If I tap with any sort of rhythm I can see the rhythm in the way they are laid out in my mind and this helps with recollection.

If I want to translate this knowledge into a number, I need to count the taps I am seeing in my head. At that point I do need to think of the word for the number.

I could even do computations on these items in my mind, imagine dividing them into two groups for instance, without ever having to link them to words until I am ready to do something with the result, such as write down the number of items in each group.

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