Cet article examine des explications possibles de la diffusion soudaine de l'expression française à travers à partir du milieu du XVIIIe siècle. À partir de ce moment, à travers est devenu remarquablement plus utilisée que l'expression similaire au travers (de), et aussi relativement plus fréquente par rapport à par, une préposition avec laquelle elle est en concurrence dans certains contextes. Une première hypothèse suppose une concurrence avec par. Une deuxième hypothèse est liée à la fin de la liberté de à (...) travers et au travers par rapport à la combinaison avec la préposition de. Les résultats indiquent que la croissance des fréquences de à travers (de) pourrait, en partie, découler d'une concurrence avec par pour la combinaison avec certains types de Sites (l'entité de référence d'une relation spatiale). L'augmentation du degré de figement - et donc de grammaticalisation - de à travers semble également avoir contribué à sa diffusion. (shrink)

This paper investigates possible explanations for the sudden diffusion of the French expression à travers, meaning ‘ through/across’, from the middle of the 18th century onwards. From that moment, à travers became remarkably more used than the similar expression au travers, and also relatively more frequent in comparison with par, ‘through’, a preposition with which it competes in certain contexts. A first hypothesis supposes a competition with par. A second assumption is linked to the end of the freedom of à (...) travers and au travers with respect to the combination with the preposition de. The results indicate that the rise of the frequencies of à travers could, in part, follow from a competition with par for the combination with certain types of Grounds. The increased level of bondedness – and thus of grammaticalization – of à travers seems also to have contributed to its diffusion. (shrink)

Linguists have debated whether complex prepositions deserve a constituent status, but none have proposed a dynamic model that can both predict what construal a given pattern imposes and account for the emergence of non-spatial readings. This paper reframes the debate on constituency as a justification of the constructional status of complex prepositional patterns from a historical perspective. It focuses on the Prep NP IL of NP lm construction, which denotes a relation of internal location between a located entity and a (...) reference entity. Four subschemas of the Internal Location construction are examined: middle cxn, center cxn, heart cxn, and midst cxn. All occurrences are extracted from the COHA, along with their co-occurring landmark NPs. Using vocabulary growth curves, all patterns are shown to be productive over the whole period covered by the corpus, although at different levels. Using word2vec, a semantic vector space with the landmark collocates of each pattern is made. Curves indexed on association scores are plotted to see how densely semantic areas have been populated across four consecutive periods: 1810s–1860s, 1870s–1910s, 1920s–1970s, and 1980s–2000s. Two divisions of labor have emerged. midst cxn and heart cxn are in complementary distribution and operate mostly at the level of abstract locations whereas middle cxn and center cxn are in parallel distribution and operate at the level of concrete locations. (shrink)

Le présent article traite des origines de la théorie de la catégorisation, telle qu’elle fut élaborée par Eleanor Rosch dans les années 1970. Il est divisé en deux parties. La première est consacrée au contexte théorique dans lequel les recherches initiales de Rosch ont pris place. Pour bien comprendre ce contexte, il convient de remonter aux recherches de Lenneberg et de ses coauteurs sur le principe de relativité de Whorf. On retracera ainsi le cheminement qui mena de ce principe jusqu’à (...) sa reformulation comme hypothèse empiriquement testable, en partant des études sur la catégorisation des couleurs (menées à l’université de Harvard) pour en arriver à la publication de l’ouvrage de Berlin et Kay sur les termes de couleurs de base. Pour des raisons que nous tenterons d’expliciter, au relativisme initial se substitua une forme d’universalisme auquel le livre de Berlin et Kay apporta une contribution non négligeable. La seconde partie narre le développement de la théorie de Rosch au sein de ce contexte universaliste. En étendant progressivement sa théorie au-delà de ses objets initiaux (les couleurs et les formes spatiales) pour embrasser les catégories dites “sémantiques”, Rosch évolua d’une conception “analogique” ou gestaltiste de la catégorie vers une analyse en termes d’attributs discrets. Son concept de prototype incorporait initialement des traits qui venaient de la Gestalttheorie et de la notion de schéma (telle qu’elle avait été opérationnalisée en psychologie après Bartlett), pour devenir ensuite plus complexe. Tout au long de cette évolution, elle conserva une approche réaliste de la catégorie, entendue comme un agrégat “naturel” de propriétés. Pour étayer son réalisme, elle recourut à des outils théoriques forgés avant elle par Egon Brunswik (à qui elle est redevable de son index de validité de l’indice) et par Garner, à qui elle a emprunté la notion de structurelle corrélationnelle, notion issue d’une théorie informationnelle de la catégorisation. Quant à sa conception des niveaux de catégorisation, et notamment du “niveau de base”, elle doit beaucoup aux travaux de Brent Berlin sur les taxinomies populaires. Il est possible aussi que Rosch ait subi l’influence de Roger Brown, du moins en ce qui concerne les schémas d’action associés à des objets. Ainsi, la théorie de Rosch constitue un “patchwork conceptuel” qui a acquis cohérence et unité en intégrant des éléments d’origines variées. (shrink)

This study has two goals. First, we present much‐needed empirical linguistic data and systematic analyses on the spatial semantic systems in English and Korean, two languages that have been extensively compared to date in the debate on spatial language and spatial cognition. We conduct our linguistic investigation comprehensively, encompassing the domains of tight‐ and loose‐fit as well as containment and support relations. The current analysis reveals both cross‐linguistic commonalities and differences: From a common set of spatial features, each language highlights (...) a subset of those features for its principal categorization, and those primary features are importantly different between English and Korean: English speakers categorize events predominantly by containment and support relations (and do so with prepositions), whereas Korean speakers categorize them by tight‐fit and loose‐fit relations (and do so with verbs), with a further distinction of containment and support within the loose‐fit relation. The analysis also shows that the tight‐fit domain is more cross‐linguistically diverse in categorization than is the loose‐fit domain. Second, we test the language data against the nonlinguistic categorization results reported in Choi and Hattrup (2012). The results show a remarkable degree of convergence between the patterns predicted from the current linguistic analysis and those found in C&H's nonlinguistic study and thus provide empirical and strong evidence for an influence of language on nonlinguistic spatial cognition. At the same time, the study reveals areas where the two systems closely interact with each other as well as those where one is independent from the other. Taking both parts of the study together, we identify the specific roles that language and spatial perception/cognition play in spatial categorization. (shrink)

Cognitive science has recently moved toward action-integrated paradigms to account for some of its most remarkable findings. This novel approach has opened up new venues for the sport sciences. In particular, a large body of literature has investigated the relationship between complex motor practice and cognition, which in the sports domain has mostly concerned the effect of imagery and other forms of mental practice on motor skill acquisition and emotional control. Yet recent evidence indicates that this relationship is bidirectional: motor (...) experience also influences higher cognition, with a broad range of cognitive abilities being impacted in various ways. In this paper, I review the latest research exploring the effect of complex motor practice on spatial cognition. After emphasizing the versatility of processes that are recruited in the acquisition of complex motor skills, I present further experimental evidence to suggest that the process of acquiring new motor skills triggers specific adaptions in the brain, which in turn can be critical in numerous aspects of daily life. Finally, I propose a mechanistic explanation to account for motor-induced improvements, within an embodied framework of cognition. (shrink)

This paper discusses spatial cognition in the domain of minimally invasive surgery. It draws on studies from this domain to shed light on a range of spatial cognitive processes and to consider individual differences in performance. In relation to modeling, the aim is to identify potential opportunities for characterizing the complex interplay between perception, action, and cognition, and to consider how theoretical models of the relevant processes might prove valuable for addressing applied questions about surgical performance and training.

Containment and support have traditionally been assumed to represent universal conceptual foundations for spatial terms. This assumption can be challenged, however: English in and on are applied across a surprisingly broad range of exemplars, and comparable terms in other languages show significant variation in their application. We propose that the broad domains of both containment and support have internal structure that reflects different subtypes, that this structure is reflected in basic spatial term usage across languages, and that it constrains children's (...) spatial term learning. Using a newly developed battery, we asked how adults and 4-year-old children speaking English or Greek distribute basic spatial terms across subtypes of containment and support. We found that containment showed similar distributions of basic terms across subtypes among all groups while support showed such similarity only among adults, with striking differences between children learning English versus Greek. We conclude that the two domains differ considerably in the learning problems they present, and that learning in and on is remarkably complex. Together, our results point to the need for a more nuanced view of spatial term learning. (shrink)

Fundamental to spatial knowledge in all species are the representations underlying object recognition, object search, and navigation through space. But what sets humans apart from other species is our ability to express spatial experience through language. This target article explores the language ofobjectsandplaces, asking what geometric properties are preserved in the representations underlying object nouns and spatial prepositions in English. Evidence from these two aspects of language suggests there are significant differences in the geometric richness with which objects and places (...) are encoded. When an object is named (i.e., with count nouns), detailed geometric properties – principally the object's shape (axes, solid and hollow volumes, surfaces, and parts) – are represented. In contrast, when an object plays the role of either “figure” (located object) or “ground” (reference object) in a locational expression, only very coarse geometric object properties are represented, primarily the main axes. In addition, the spatial functions encoded by spatial prepositions tend to be nonmetric and relatively coarse, for example, “containment,” “contact,” “relative distance,” and “relative direction.” These properties are representative of other languages as well. The striking differences in the way language encodes objects versus places lead us to suggest two explanations: First, there is a tendency for languages to level out geometric detail from both object and place representations. Second, a nonlinguistic disparity between the representations of “what” and “where” underlies how language represents objects and places. The language of objects and places converges with and enriches our understanding of corresponding spatial representations. (shrink)

The complex systems approach to cognitive science invites a new understanding of extended cognitive systems. According to this understanding, extended cognitive systems are heterogenous, composed of brain, body, and niche, non-linearly coupled to one another. This view of cognitive systems, as non-linearly coupled brain–body–niche systems, promises conceptual and methodological advances. In this article we focus on two of these. First, the fundamental interdependence among brain, body, and niche makes it possible to explain extended cognition without invoking representations or computation. Second, (...) cognition and conscious experience can be understood as a single phenomenon, eliminating fruitless philosophical discussion of qualia and the so-called hard problem of consciousness. What we call “extended phenomenological-cognitive systems” are relational and dynamical entities, with interactions among heterogeneous parts at multiple spatial and temporal scales. (shrink)

Cognitive science has recently moved toward action-integrated paradigms to account for some of its most remarkable findings. This novel approach has opened up new venues for the sport sciences. In particular, a large body of literature has investigated the relationship between complex motor practice and cognition, which in the sports domain has mostly concerned the effect of imagery and other forms of mental practice on motor skill acquisition and emotional control. Yet recent evidence indicates that this relationship is bidirectional: motor (...) experience also influences higher cognition, with a broad range of cognitive abilities being impacted in various ways. In this paper, I review the latest research exploring the effect of complex motor practice on spatial cognition. After emphasizing the versatility of processes that are recruited in the acquisition of complex motor skills, I present further experimental evidence to suggest that the process of acquiring new motor skills triggers specific adaptions in the brain, which in turn can be critical in numerous aspects of daily life. Finally, I propose a mechanistic explanation to account for motor-induced improvements, within an embodied framework of cognition. (shrink)

Unlike birds and mammals, reptiles are commonly thought to possess only the most rudimentary means of interacting with their environments, reflexively responding to sensory information to the near exclusion of higher cognitive function. However, reptilian brains, though structurally somewhat different from those of mammals and birds, use many of the same cellular and molecular processes to support complex behaviors in homologous brain regions. Here, the neurological mechanisms supporting reptilian cognition are reviewed, focusing specifically on spatial cognition and the hippocampus. These (...) processes are compared to those seen in mammals and birds within an ecologically and evolutionarily relevant context. By viewing reptilian cognition through an integrative framework, a more robust understanding of reptile cognition is gleaned. Doing so yields a broader view of the evolutionarily conserved molecular and cellular mechanisms that underlie cognitive function and a better understanding of the factors that led to the evolution of complex cognition. (shrink)

Journal Name: Cognitive Linguistics Issue: Ahead of print.

Block building is a popular play activity among young children and is also used by psychologists to assess their intelligence. However, little research has attempted to systematically explore the cognitive bases of block-building ability. The current study (N= 66 Chinese preschoolers, 32 boys and 34 girls; mean age = 4.7 years, SD = 0.29, range = 3.4 to 5.2 years) investigated the relationships between six measures of spatial skills (shape naming, shape recognition, shape composition, solid figure naming, cube transformation, and (...) mental rotation, with the former four representing form perception and the latter two representing visualization) and block-building complexity. Correlation results showed that three of the four measures of form perception (shape naming, shape recognition, and shape composition) were significantly and positively correlated with block-building complexity, whereas the two measures of visualization were not. Results from regression models indicated that shape recognition and shape composition, as well as shape-recognition-by-gender interaction, were unique predictors of children’s block-building complexity. These findings provide preliminary evidence for the basic spatial skills underlying children’s block-building complexity and have implications for classroom instructions aimed at improving preschoolers’ block-building complexity. (shrink)

In general, understanding requires cognitive and linguistic skills, encompasses cultural, social, contextual and individual aspects, and is characterised by gradualness and dynamicity. In this study, the intertwined set of relevant components involved in the complex process of understanding space deixis will be analysed in the specific context of face-to-face interaction. In everyday conversation, this process is unavoidably mutual and may include misunderstanding (which often opens up a way to understanding), repairs, reformulations and negotiation cycles, all of which eventually lead to (...) understanding and mutual comprehension or to communication failure. Many scholars have already pointed out several elements that influence interactants’ understanding in a positive or negative way: on the one hand, shared physical context, cotext, common ground, shared knowledge and avoidance devices; on the other, ambiguity, speakers’ failures, and interactants’ asymmetric features with regard to language and culture. The interactional context, the cotext and the use of multimodal resources (resorted to as co-speech or to substitute language) play a significant role in the dynamic process of understanding spatial deixis, often helping to overcome the difficulties related to peripheral cases of spatial deictics and other causes of misunderstandings, which can either work as a starting point for understanding or lead to communication failure. (shrink)

Working memory performance affects children’s learning. This study examined objective, subjective, and physiological cognitive load while children completed a spatial working memory complex span task. Frist, 80 Taiwanese 11-year-olds who participated in Experiment 1 confirmed the suitability of the materials. Then, 72 Taiwanese 11-year-olds were assigned to high and low complexity groups to participate in Experiment 2 to test the study hypothesis. Children had to recall at the end of a dual-task list and answer two questions regarding the difficulty and (...) mental effort involved in processing and storage. Their pupil diameters were recorded using an eye-tracker. Two-way mixed ANOVA found that the processing requirements and memory load reduced storage and aggravated the subjective CL of storage; the subjective CL of processing was higher under highly complex conditions. Stepwise regression analysis indicated that subjective CL of processing predicted memory performance in low CL conditions, and physiological CL of processing predicted it in high CL conditions. (shrink)

Jeffery et al. characterize the egocentric/allocentric distinction as discrete. But paradoxically, much of the neural and behavioral evidence they adduce undermines a discrete distinction. More strikingly, their positive proposal reflects a more complex interplay between egocentric and allocentric coding than they acknowledge. Properly interpreted, their proposal about three-dimensional spatial representation contributes to recent work on embodied cognition.

Journal Name: Cognitive Linguistics Issue: Ahead of print.

La motivation de l’amalgamation de jeu de mots se circonscrit à la combinaison de lexèmes source cognitivement reconnus comme ayant une similitude linguistique (qu’elle soit sémantique ou morphologique), ou un effet d’oxymore. Il est possible que les interlocuteurs remotivent ensuite des groupes de consonnes de ces formes, s’ils leurs associent des traits sémantiques pour former d’autres amalgames.L’amalgamation de jeu de mots est destinée à renforcer la saillance cognitive (une attention accrue est requise pour la réception de la forme (...) produite). La forme produite se démarque alors de son cotexte essentiellement composé de lexèmes monomorphémiques, de dérivés et de composés non-tronqués. Cela change la façon dont on se focalise sur un référent, que ce soit par la mise en relief d’une lexie sur laquelle on attire l’attention, ou par la réduction de son impact sur les interlocuteurs qui doivent reconstituer mentalement les éléments sources possiblement gênants. Cette approche principale dévoile une arborescence d’objectifs possibles (illustrée avec un échantillon de données représentatives), comprenant l’humour, l’attractivité commerciale, les mots d’esprits pour défendre ses idées, l’esthétisme littéraire, l’euphémisme, le dysphémisme, ou l’idiosyncrasie pour exprimer son individualité ou paraître original et créatif.L’examen de formes coréférentielles au sein ou en dehors de l’amalgamation de jeu de mots démontre que l’objectif repose sur l’occurrence (est purement pragmatique). L’analyse, dans des situations variées, d’occurrences de mêmes formes amalgamées par jeu de mots prouve que la motivation repose sur l’usage et se trouve sur l’interface sémantique-pragmatique. Cependant, la pragmatique doit parfois prendre le relais des limites de la sémantique pour mettre en lumière la motivation d’une forme amalgamée, puisque la forme peut rester ambigüe. (shrink)

In this article, I revisit Landau and Jackendoff's () paper, “What and where in spatial language and spatial cognition,” proposing a friendly amendment and reformulation. The original paper emphasized the distinct geometries that are engaged when objects are represented as members of object kinds, versus when they are represented as figure and ground in spatial expressions. We provided empirical and theoretical arguments for the link between these distinct representations in spatial language and their accompanying nonlinguistic neural representations, emphasizing the “what” (...) and “where” systems of the visual system. In the present paper, I propose a second division of labor between two classes of spatial prepositions in English that appear to be quite distinct. One class includes prepositions such as in and on, whose core meanings engage force-dynamic, functional relationships between objects, with geometry only a marginal player. The second class includes prepositions such as above/below and right/left, whose core meanings engage geometry, with force-dynamic relationships a passing or irrelevant variable. The insight that objects’ force-dynamic relationships matter to spatial terms’ uses is not new; but thinking of these terms as a distinct set within spatial language has theoretical and empirical consequences that are new. I propose three such consequences, rooted in the fact that geometric knowledge is highly constrained and early-emerging in life, while force-dynamic knowledge of objects and their interactions is relatively unconstrained and needs to be learned piecemeal over a lengthy timeline. First, the two classes will engage different learning problems, with different developmental trajectories for both first and second language learners; second, the classes will naturally lead to different degrees of cross-linguistic variation; and third, they may be rooted in different neural representations. (shrink)

This paper investigates three morphosyntactic alternations in Estonian – those between the exterior locative cases allative, adessive and ablative and the corresponding postpositionspeale‘onto’,peal‘on’ andpealt‘off’. Based on the Complexity Principle (e.g., Rohdenburg, Günter. 2002. Processing complexity and the variable use of prepositions in English. In Hubert Cuyckens & Günter Radden (eds.),Perspectives on prepositions, 79–100. Tübingen: Niemeyer), we expect cognitively more complex constructions to use more explicit (i.e., morphologically more substantial) marking by means of a postposition. Further, we expect variation to be (...) conditioned similarly in all three semantic categories. For each of the three alternations, a random sample of the two outcomes (case vs. postposition) from the Estonian National Corpus is used, resulting in 3,000 data points. Using properties of the Landmark phrase as independent variables in Bayesian mixed-effects logistic regression models, we predict the choice of postpositions over case-marked realisations. Of the patterns found, only the frequency-related one supports our complexity-related hypothesis. We conclude that the Complexity Principle, in its general form, has little explanatory power for the Estonian constructions at hand and, in particular, that the derived principle of ‘analytic support’ is not generally applicable. We show, however, that the grammatical knowledge of Estonian exterior locative cases and the corresponding postpositions is regulated by our three factors in a relatively uniform way. (shrink)

Résumé Le but de cet article est d’interroger les trois notions de texte, discours et cognition, et les modèles théoriques, complémentaires ou opposés, qui les illustrent et les défendent. Pour cela, les notions ne seront pas analysées à la suite, une par une, mais en parallèle, deux par deux. Reprenant les orientations de mes travaux actuels en linguistique textuelle et en linguistique cognitive, je les confronterai en deux temps : texte vs. discours et texte vs. cognition. Cette double (...) confrontation, avec le texte pour dénominateur commun, laisse ainsi entendre, d’une part, que si je prends en compte le discours comme le cadre contextuel, situationnel, générique, où apparaît le texte, je m’attache au texte comme objet d’analyse, suivant en cela une tradition « pragoise », à la fois structurale ou macro-syntaxique et fonctionnelle ; cela laisse entendre, d’autre part, que cette conception du texte permet de concilier les théories néo-pragoises à celles que développent les linguistiques cognitives d’aujourd’hui, centrées sur diverses compétences, activités ou opérations, mentales, sémantiques, pragmatiques et sémiotiques, souvent regroupées sous le terme englobant ou résultant de représentation : espaces mentaux, projections, mélange (blending), émergence de sens. Pour finir je montre que la procédure de double intégration, conceptuelle et prédicative, permet d’illustrer la complémentarité des deux modèles, mental-cognitif et macrosyntaxique-textuel. (shrink)

Le présent article traite des questions en anglais suivant une approche qui s'inscrit dans le cadre de la linguistique cognitive. Les principaux types de question y sont discutés, ainsi que les diverses structures au moyen desquelles elles sont exprimées : propositions interrogatives indépendantes fermées et ouvertes, question tags, questions déclaratives, questions-répliques et questions indirectes. L'intonation des questions, l'inversion sujet-auxiliaire et le rôle de l'auxiliaire do font partie des points abordés. La distinction, parfois délicate, entre les propositions subordonnées interrogatives et (...) les constructions relatives dites libres est également discutée. Les diverses structures analysées sont envisagées comme des instances de constructions symboliques, dotées à la fois de propriétés formelles et sémantiques-pragmatiques. Considérée sous cet angle, la grammaire n'est pas indépendante du sens mais apparaît, tout au contraire, fondamentalement signifiante et motivée. (shrink)

En allemand moderne, les GN dépourvus d’actualisateur et soumis à l’indice de singulier (type [ØN]sg) encodent une visée non discrète et non définie. En ancien-haut-allemand, le marquage des catégories nominales est en cours d’élaboration, et l’interprétation d’un GN réduit à sa base (soumis à l’indice de singulier) émerge du contexte d’emploi. Dans l’exposé qui suit, on présentera les différentes interprétations sémantiques possibles pour la forme de GN [ØN]sg, dans le corpus de Otfrid (860), en analysant quels signes coprésents dans l’énoncé (...) guident le récepteur dans son travail interprétatif, en distinguant des contextes actualisants et des contextes désactualisants. Ce faisant, on s’interrogera sur le degré de grammaticalisation de l’opposition /discret/~/non discret/ dans cet état de langue. (shrink)

The term Republic is a word whose obviousness and presence in our contemporary political culture are matched only by its long-term indeterminacies. The first of these indeterminacies, moreover, has to do with the origin of “republic” in the Latin syntagm res publica with the immediately complex and polysemous meaning of a notion that we find frequently used under the Roman Republic itself but also under the Empire. Questioning res publica also obviously means questioning a crucial part of Roman political history, (...) but also means thinking political history as such and methodologically reflecting on the language of these politics. As such, there is no stabilised model, no searching for “the essence of the thing”, or any claim to a stabilised definition of the object of study as a series of deletions and reappearances of core meanings is characteristic of res publica. The dynamic investigation concerns a question which, according to a syntagm present in the last page of Claudia Moatti’s book in a significant way, becomes a “mobilising reference”, therefore political. In this journey, the acceptance of uncertainty and indeterminacy, in a way, becomes the price to pay to rediscover the life of words and their historical signifiance, insofar as they are linked to the action of individuals, to their commitment to the world, without relying on semantic certainties or on a programme to be implemented, but by starting precisely from open questions because none of the proposed answers has proven to be satisfactory. The comparison with another moment of political and semantic crisis, the Machiavellian moment, will in conclusion illustrate the fruitfulness of the perspective adopted. (shrink)

The dorsal anterior cingulate cortex is a key node in the human salience network. It has been ascribed motor, pain-processing and affective functions. However, the dynamics of information flow in this complex region and how it responds to inputs remain unclear and are difficult to study using non-invasive electrophysiology. The area is targeted by neurosurgery to treat neuropathic pain. During deep brain stimulation surgery, we recorded local field potentials from this region in humans during a decision-making task requiring motor output. (...) We investigated the spatial and temporal distribution of information flow within the dACC. We demonstrate the existence of a distributed network within the anterior cingulate cortex where discrete nodes demonstrate directed communication following inputs. We show that this network anticipates and responds to the valence of feedback to actions. We further show that these network dynamics adapt following learning. Our results provide evidence for the integration of learning and the response to feedback in a key cognitive region. (shrink)

Literature on driving research suggests a relationship between cognition and driving performance in older and younger drivers. There is little research on adults and driving, despite them being the largest age cohort behind the wheel. Among the cognitive domains, visuospatial abilities are expected to be highly predictive of driving skills and driving fitness. The relationship between specific spatial mental transformation skills and driving performance has not yet been examined. The present study aimed to investigate the relationship between overall cognitive functioning, (...) self and object-based spatial mental transformation skills, and driving performance in a sample of younger and older adult drivers. Participants were comprised of one hundred younger and 83 older adult Italian drivers. Participants completed a computerized driving test assessing traffic stress resilience, visual and motor reaction time, and the ability to obtain an overview of the traffic scenario. The Mental Rotation Test and the Object Perspective Taking Test were administered in order to assess object-based and self-based spatial mental transformation skills. The Montreal Cognitive Assessment Test was administered control for global cognitive functioning. The effects of education and gender were also controlled in the analysis. The results of the present study suggested that: The effect of age, favoring younger participants, was found in DT, vRT, mRT, and ATAVT tests. The effect of global cognitive functioning was found in DT and ATAV tests. The effect of the spatial mental transformation tests was found in DT, vRT, and ATAVT tests. Taken together, these results suggest the specific contribution of spatial mental transformation skills in the execution of complex behaviors connected to the fitness to drive. Prospectively, the results of the present study relating spatial mental transformation skills and driving processes may be a valuable source of knowledge for researchers dealing with the relationship between cognitive resources and navigation aids. (shrink)

I propose that neural cognition is supported by non-neural storage of a 3-D model of local space, used in the planning of movements. Information is stored in wave-like excitations which couple to neurons in the thalamus, with the wave-vectors of excitations representing spatial positions. This hybrid of neural and non-neural cognition may have fitness advantages over any purely neural mechanism -- in information capacity, geometric accuracy, and fast selective retrieval. The wave excitations may be sustained on a Bose-condensed state of (...) some excitation in the brain, by a mechanism like those investigated by Frohlich, Umezawa, Vitiello and others. These states, being frictionless, can store information indefinitely at low energy levels, insulated from thermal noise, so are an ideal substrate for memory. If a Bose-condensed state is a 3-D representation of local reality, it may be the basis of phenomenal consciousness . The resulting theory of consciousness is highly constrained, and agrees well with the main properties of conscious experience. In this account, consciousness arises from a very simple state of matter, rather than from complexity; and it evolved to meet one of the strongest selection pressures on the brain. (shrink)

In the selection of job candidates who have the mental ability to become professional ATCOs, psychometric testing has been a ubiquitous activity in the ATM domain. To contribute to psychometric research in the ATM domain, we investigated the extent to which spatial orientation ability (SOA), as conceptualized in the spatial cognition and navigation literature, predicted air traffic conflict detection performance in a simulated free route airspace (FRA) environment. The implementation of free route airspace (FRA) over the past few years, notably (...) in Europe, have facilitated air traffic services by giving greater flexibility to aviation operators in planning and choosing preferred air routes that can lead to quicker arrivals. FRA offers enhanced system safety and efficiency, but these benefits can be outweighed by the introduction of air traffic conflicts that are geometrically more complex. Such conflicts can arise from increased number and distribution of conflict points, as well as from elevated uncertainty in aircraft maneuvering (for instance, during heading changes). Overall, these issues will make conflict detection more challenging for air traffic controllers (ATCOs). Consequently, there is a need to select ATCOs with suitably high levels of spatial orientation ability (SOA) to ensure flight safety under FRA implementation. In this study, we tested 20 participants who are eligible for ATCO job application, and found that response time-based performance on a newly developed, open access, computerized spatial orientation test (SOT) predicted time to loss of minimum separation (tLMS) performance on an air traffic conflict detection task (AT-CDT) we designed. We found this predictive relationship to be significant to a moderately large extent under scenarios with high air traffic density (raw regression coefficient = 0.58). Moreover, we demonstrated our AT-CDT as a valid test in terms of eliciting well-known mental workload and spatial learning effects. We explained these findings in light of similar or overlapping mental processes that were most likely activated optimally under task conditions featuring approximately equal numbers of outcome-relevant stimuli. We conclude by discussing the further application of the SOT to the selection of prospective ATCOs who can demonstrate high levels of conflict detection performance in FRA during training simulations. (shrink)

Spatial metaphors of affect display remarkable consistencies across languages in mapping sensorimotor experiences onto emotional states, reflecting a great degree of similarity in how our bodies register affect. At the same time, however, affect is complex and there is more than a single possible mapping from vertical spatial concepts to affective states. Here we consider a previously unreported case of spatial metaphors mapping down onto desirable, and up undesirable emotional experiences in Mlabri, an Austroasiatic language of Thailand and Laos, making (...) a novel contribution to the study of metaphor and Cognitive Linguistics. Using first-hand corpus and elicitation data, we examine the metaphorical expressions: klol jur ‘heart going down’ and klol khɯn ‘heart going up’/klol kɔbɔ jur ‘heart not going down’. Though reflecting a metaphorical mapping opposite to the commonly reported happy is up metaphor, which is said to link to universal bodily correlates of emotion, the Mlabri metaphors are far from idiosyncratic. Rather, they are grounded in the bodily experience of positive low-arousal states, and in that reflect an emic view of ideal affect centered on contentment and tranquility. This underscores the complexity of bodily experience of affect, demonstrating that cultures draw on the available sensorimotor correlates of emotion in distinct ways. (shrink)

Landau also pushes the role of syntax and its mapping to semantics in learning what some would consider “easy words”—the simplest spatial prepositions in English, in and on. Taking as a starting point that the syntactic distribution of a word is a reflex of its meaning, Landau shows that careful study of how children and adults linguistically encode a range of containment and support configurations reveals a special status for “core” configurations in each domain. She proposes that children come to (...) learning spatial terms with the expectation that configurations reflecting core concepts of containment and support will be expressed with the maximally simple, unmarked, linguistic expression. (shrink)

Prepositions name spatial relationships. But they are also used to convey abstract, non-spatial relationships —raising the question of how the abstract uses relate to the concrete spatial uses. Despite considerable success in delineating these relationships, no general account exists for the two most frequently extended prepositions: in and on. We test the proposal that what is preserved in abstract uses of these prepositions is the relative degree of control between the located object and the reference object. Across four experiments, we (...) find a continuum of greater figure control for on and greater ground control for in. These findings bear on accounts of semantic structure and language change, as well as on second language instruction. (shrink)

The ability to resist distracting stimuli whilst voluntarily focusing on a task is fundamental to our everyday cognitive functioning. Here, we investigated how this ability develops, and thereafter declines, across the lifespan using a single task/experiment. Young children (5–7 years), older children (10–11 years), young adults (20–27 years), and older adults (62–86 years) were presented with complex visual scenes. Endogenous (voluntary) attention was engaged by having the participants search for a visual target presented on either the left or right side (...) of the display. The onset of the visual scenes was preceded – at stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) of 50, 200, or 500 ms – by a task-irrelevant sound (an exogenous crossmodal spatial distractor) delivered either on the same or opposite side as the visual target, or simultaneously on both sides (cued, uncued, or neutral trials, respectively). Age-related differences were revealed, especially in the extreme age-groups, which showed a greater impact of crossmodal spatial distractors. Young children were highly susceptible to exogenous spatial distraction at the shortest SOA (50 ms), whereas older adults were distracted at all SOAs, showing significant exogenous capture effects during the visual search task. By contrast, older children and young adults' search performance was not significantly affected by crossmodal spatial distraction. Overall, these findings present a detailed picture of the developmental trajectory of endogenous resistance to crossmodal spatial distraction from childhood to old age and demonstrate a different efficiency in coping with distraction across the four age-groups studied. (shrink)

A fundamental cognitive function found across a wide range of species and necessary for survival is the ability to navigate complex environments. It has been suggested that mobility may play an important role in the development of spatial skills. Despite evolutionary arguments offering logical explanations for why sex/gender differences in spatial abilities and mobility might exist, thus far there has been limited sampling from nonindustrialized and subsistence-based societies. This lack of sampling diversity has left many unanswered questions regarding the effects (...) that environmental variation and cultural norms may have in shaping mobility patterns during childhood and the development of spatial competencies that may be associated with it. Here we examine variation in mobility, performance on large-scale spatial skills, and performance on small-scale spatial skills among Twa forager/pastoralist children whose daily lives have been dramatically altered since settlement and the introduction of government-funded boarding schools. Unlike in previous findings among Twa adults, boys and girls show similar patterns of travel on all measures of mobility. We also find no significant differences in spatial task performance by gender for large- or small-scale spatial skills. Further, children performed as well as adults did on mental rotation, and they outperformed adults on the water-level task. We discuss how children’s early learning environments may influence the development of both large- and small-scale spatial skills. (shrink)

Studies of primate cognition have conclusively shown that humans and apes share a range of basic cognitive abilities. As a corollary, these same studies have also focussed attention on what makes humans unique, and on when and how specifically human cognitive skills evolved. There is widespread agreement that a major distinguishing feature of the human mind is its capacity for causal reasoning. This paper argues that causal cognition originated with the use made of indirect natural signs by early hominins forced (...) to adapt to variable late Miocene and early Pliocene environments; that early hominins evolved an innate tendency to search for such signs and infer their causes; that causal inference required the existence of incipient working memory; and that causal relationships were stored through being integrated into spatial maps to create increasingly complex causal models of the world. (shrink)

Cet article étudie les délimitations morphosyntaxiques des noms propres en s’inspirant de la sémantique de la syntaxe. Les propriétés typographiques, morphologiques et syntaxiques des noms propres sont mises en lien et se répondent parfois iconiquement afin de faire émerger une nouvelle description des noms propres en tant que nominaux – et non plus simples noms ou syntagmes nominaux. Les noms propres sont des unités de rang « nominal » qui cherchent à intégrer des formes potentiellement marginales au sein du (...) domaine nominal, par une double action 1) de préservation d’une altérité formelle et linguistique et 2) d’imitation du comportement morphosyntaxique du nom commun. L’analyse s’appuie principalement sur le corpus commun en anglais mais reste transposable en majeure partie aux exemples du corpus en français. (shrink)

Cet article a pour but de décrire et analyser l’évolution de la détermination du nom du Vieil-Anglais à l’anglais moderne sous l’angle de la grammaticalisation. Les innovations principales à l’époque du Moyen-Anglais sont l’émergence de l’article indéfini, de la construction N of N ainsi que Quantifieur of N.

La thématique des questions d’un point de vue diachronique est l’objet de cet article. Dans un premier temps, est proposé un tour d’horizon des questions ouvertes et fermées depuis le vieil anglais avant de nous intéresser à l’apparition et à l’évolution des pronoms relatifs en wh-. L’auxiliaire do est brièvement discuté. Sont ensuite analysés les syntagmes nominaux thématisés et les prédications existentielles, puis les questions tags ainsi que la grammaticalisation des questions fermées.

Machine generated contents note: -- Preface -- Acknowledgements -- Notes on Contributors -- PART I: COMPLEXITY IN ANIMAL MINDS -- Introduction: M.McGonigle-Chalmers -- Relational and Absolute Discrimination Learning by Squirrel Monkeys: Establishing a Common Ground with Human Cognition; B.T.Jones -- Serial List Retention by Non-Human Primates: Complexity and Cognitive Continuity; F.R.Treichler -- The Use of Spatial Structure in Working Memory: A Comparative Standpoint; C.De Lillo -- The Emergence of Linear Sequencing in Children: A Continuity Account and a Formal Model; M.McGonigle-Chalmers&I.Kusel (...) -- Sensitivity to Quantity: What Counts Across Species?; S.T.Boysen&A.M.Yocom -- PART II: COMPLEXITY IN ROBOTS -- Editorial Introduction; D.McFarland -- Towards Cognitive Robotics: Robotics, Biology and Developmental Psychology; M.Lee, U.Nehmzow&M.Rodriguez -- Structuring Intelligence: The Role of Hierarchy, Modularity and Learning in Generating Intelligent Behaviour; J.J.Bryson -- Epistemology, Access, and Computational Models; G.Luger -- Reasoning About Representations in Autonomous Systems: What P´Olya and Lakatos Have To Say; A.Bundy -- PART III: LANGUAGE, EVOLUTION AND THE COMPLEX MIND -- Editorial Introduction; K.Stenning -- How to Qualify for a Cognitive Upgrade: Executive Control, Glass Ceilings, and the Limits of Simian Success; A.Clark -- Private Codes and Public Structures; C.Allen -- The Emergence of Complex Language; W.Hinzen -- Language Evolution: Enlarging the Picture; K.Stenning&M.Van Lambalgen -- Epilogue: Reminiscences of Brendan McGonigle -- Index. (shrink)

De nombreuses études sur l'apprentissage des langues étrangères montrent que l'apprenant est incapable d'atteindre le niveau d'un locuteur natif. Des phénomènes de fossilisation et de nativisation demeurent, même à un niveau très avancé (Selinker & Lamendella, 1980 ; Selinker & Lakshamanan, 1992 ; Andersen, 1983 ; Narcy-Combes, 2005). Cet article met en évidence le rôle limitatif des représentations cognitives chez l'apprenant dans un contexte où il est possible d'isoler chronologiquement la construction des représentations cognitives et celle d'une première langue. Ce (...) contexte est celui de la surdité profonde prélinguistique, et plus spécifiquement celui de l'oralisme : l’acquisition de la langue y est différée de quelques mois ou années sans qu'il n'y ait de système linguistique préalable puisque les oralistes sont tenus à l'écart des langues signées. Les jeunes sourds développent des représentations cognitives dans leurs premières années de vie, préalablement à l'accès à une première langue. Or, des études expérimentales (ex. Vinter, 2000) montrent que les sujets sourds ont une approche inhabituelle du spatial et du temporel, approche pouvant être mise en rapport avec l'absence de perception auditive. Du fait des liens entre perception sensorielle et conception (ex. Talmy, 1988 & 2000), les représentations cognitives des sujets sourds relativement à l'espace et au temps seraient donc spécifiques. La langue orale produite par ces sujets à l'adolescence présente quant à elle des caractéristiques inhabituelles dans les domaines de la langue qui sont liés à l'espace et au temps, et ce, aussi bien chez les anglophones que chez les francophones dont les productions orales ont été analysées (ex. Vincent-Durroux, 2009 & 2008). Les représentations cognitives influent donc sur l'appropriation de la langue par les sourds. La discussion porte sur le fait que, dans le contexte de l'apprentissage de langues étrangères par des entendants, les représentations cognitives sous-jacentes à la langue maternelle pourraient avoir un rôle limitatif et ainsi expliquer la persistance des phénomènes de fossilisation et de nativisation. (shrink)

The book consists of 6 chapters. Chapter One explains the reason why SLA researchers should study the language learning environment in space: population movements associated with internal and external migration and social mobility such as the circuits of commodity production and distribution create much space, in which language learning environment become diverse and uneven. With the spatial perspective, we can fully understand the interactions between language learners and the world or environments.In Chapter Two, by introducing the brief history of Critical (...) Spatial Theory, the author wants to tell us one of the key ideas in the theory: the social production of space, which views space as the product of the social relations of its era. Based on it, the author adds that the production of languages is an integral aspect of the production of space on a global scale. It can help us to understand how social mobility shapes language learning environments. From this perspective, the local environments in which languages are learned are outcomes of the production of space under the influence of mobility. It reiterates the key view that the global mobilities of physical objects (people, goods and information) produce space.In Chapter Three, the author introduces the mainstream views held by modern linguistics: languages are conceptualized as objects in the space. They hold that the spatiality of language is given by providing correct writing systems and standardized rules for various languages. Influenced by mainstream conception of language from modern linguistics, SLA tends to regard languages as self-contained objects in space. However, this view neglects the relation between language and the learning environments. The author holds that the distribution and circulation of languages and their varieties in geographical space produce the spatiality of language, which clears the ground for an environment or object-as-space view of language in Chapter Four.In Chapter Four, the author develops an alternative "objects-as-space" view and introduces three concepts to illustrate spatiality of language: flat ontology, assemblage and mobilities. The concept of flat ontology helps explain what language is and how it comes into being in the world; From assemblage perspective, the author develops the idea that everything is an object, so are human beings and languages. Language (the non-physical object) interacts with various physical objects, forming the language-bearing assemblage. This assemblage is the form of spatiality of language. The mobilities theory explains how language-bearing assemblages develop or change on a global scale because of social mobility, emphasizing the importance of learning environment in SLA. All in all, the author outlines how language makes its way into physical space in the form of assemblages, or assemblages of assemblages.Chapter Five centers on language learning environment. First, the author explains the relation between language learners and their learning environment from an ecological view: the learner is a part of the language learning environment, and second language learning is a spatial interaction between the learners and the semiotic resources provided by environment. Then, the author discusses language environment from two different perspectives. From an 'individual' perspective, environments are assembled by individuals from the spatial resources available; from an 'areal' view, environments are shaped both by local circumstances and global circulations of language-bearing assemblages. Meanwhile, the author also discusses other language environments like the multilingual city and online resources. What the author hopes to develop in this chapter is an environment perspective that grounds the contexts of language learning in space, which helps the readers think about language learning from a spatial perspective.Chapter Six contains three parts. In the first part, it outlines the work of a number of researchers from sociolinguistics and the contribution they made to the spatial theory. In the second part, the author wants to tell us how the idea of language learning environment emerges from his own research. The last part discusses the four main researching routes (areal studies, studies of individuals learning in settings, studies of the construction of individual learning environment and design-based studies) that might influence SLA research on language learning environments and some research methods. The book is in alignment with several recent "turns" occurring in the field of SLA, such as "social turn" (Block, 2003) and "multilingual turn" (May, 2014), both of which bring to the fore the social aspects involved in language learning. While the first "turn" accentuates the role of social context in shaping and influencing learner cognition, the latter highlights how the physical multilingual world remold language learning experiences, and how the mental multilingual world helps raise learners' language awareness, and facilitates their successful construction of an identity of legitimate multi-language users. The book under review joins up the two "turns" in acknowledging that language learners are persons-in-context with organic interaction with social learning environment (Ushioda, 2021). This view has research and pedagogical implications. From the point of doing research, spatial perspectives, advocated in the book, afford huge research potentials for both language teachers and (instructed) SLA researchers to conduct situated investigations, exploring the complex and dynamic nexus between language learners and their surrounding environment (not restricted to people) that play a part in their learning experience, and thus gaining insightful understanding of how individuals and learning contexts are coupled with each other, how they evolve together, and how they constitute an ecosystem that generates affordances, facilitating or constraining language learning. Pedagogically speaking, the spatial perspectives encourage language teachers to hold an ecological view of language teaching and learning, directing their attention to the individuality of each language learner and their complex, dynamic and multifaceted relationality with other learners and the physical realities, rather than solely focusing on the abstract systems (e.g., the development of cognitive aspect). This holistic view allows language teachers to take measures to address concrete questions emerging in and out of the classrooms, and stimulates them to design and experiment with pedagogical interventions that help to create a favorable environment for language learning. This view also invites language teachers to take learner agency into account (Xu & Long, 2020) and to design pedagogical activities that enable learners to take agentive actions to adapt their environments as they actively create and seek their own language learning opportunities, making the world their own (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). In turn, teachers' agency-enabling activities will ultimately help learners to autonomously access a range of resources in this new affordance-rich era to improve their language skills, and thus become more independent in their pathway to life-long learning.Beside the above benefits, the book is also theoretically and methodologically friendly. In illustrating the role of space in SLA, the author invokes a plethora of theories from such disciplines as sociology, sociolinguistics, psychology, etc. This orientation helps readers to build a transdisciplinary framework to capture the multi-layered nature of SLA, and to acquire a nuanced understanding of how language learning is influenced by multiple scales of environmental factors. Methodologically, the author proposes several specific methods that are especially apt to investigate language learning environment. These methods, together with the theoretical foundation laid by the book, will definitely help researchers and language teaching practitioners to further delve into the complex interplay between context and language learners.Admittedly, the book is not without weaknesses. It spends most of its words on illustrating the importance of physical environment in SLA. Another essential component, the virtual environment is insufficiently referenced and discussed. This lacking is undoubtedly a regret the book leaves with us, especially in these years of pandemic, where language learning in virtual spaces is becoming a norm.All in all, the book is an invaluable contribution to the field of SLA, and is worthy of recommending to language teaching practitioners, researchers, and postgraduates in applied linguistics. (shrink)

A theory of how concept formation begins is presented that accounts for conceptual activity in the first year of life, shows how increasing conceptual complexity comes about, and predicts the order in which new types of information accrue to the conceptual system. In a compromise between nativist and empiricist views, it offers a single domain-general mechanism that redescribes attended spatiotemporal information into an iconic form. The outputs of this mechanism consist of types of spatial information that we know infants attend (...) to in the first months of life. These primitives form the initial basis of concept formation, allow explicit preverbal thought, such as recall, inferences, and simple mental problem solving, and support early language learning. The theory details how spatial concepts become associated with bodily feelings of force and trying. It also explains why concepts of emotions, sensory concepts such as color, and theory of mind concepts are necessarily later acquisitions because they lack contact with spatial descriptions to interpret unstructured internal experiences. Finally, commonalities between the concepts of preverbal infants and nonhuman primates are discussed. (shrink)