What Do Words Do? Toward a Theory of Language-Augmented Thought

摘要: Abstract Much of human communication involves language—a system qualitatively different from those used by other animals. In this chapter, I focus on a fundamental property language: referring to objects with labels (e.g., using the word “chair” refer chair). What consequences does such labeling have cognitive and perceptual processes? review evidence indicating that verbal do not simply point or nonlinguistic concepts, but rather actively modulate object representations are brought on-line during “nonverbal” tasks. Using words concrete affects learning new categories, memory for reasoning about familiar even basic visual processing. Object activated means appear be different, specifically, more categorical, than ostensibly same nonverbal means. A connectionist model “language augmented thought” provides computational account how may augment