The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to its talk
by:
Prof. *Wolfram HINZEN* (Grammar & Cognition Lab, Universitat Pompeu Fabra,
Barcelona)
[homepage <https://sites.google.com/site/wolframhinzen/home> lab page
<http://www.grammar.cat>]
*Title:* *Disorders of reference across cognitive disorders*
*Date*: Wednesday, 10 February 2016
*Time:* 17:00-18:30
*Location*: Department of Cognitive Science, CEU, Oktober 6 st. 7, room 101
*Abstract:*
Progress in understanding and remediating disorders of thought has been
hampered by the lack of an actual theory of thought. Neurocognitive
variables such as memory, executive functioning or ‘theory of mind’ have
formed the bread and butter of clinical testing in cognitive
neuropsychiatry. However, several decades of studies have persistently
revealed difficulties in the attempt to causally link deficits in such
cognitive domains to clinical symptoms such as formal thought disorder or
delusions. Are we missing out on an important element in the human thought
system that is critical to normal neurocognitive functioning and
potentially explanatory for some of its forms of decline?
In this presentation I firstly review some formal aspects of
*referentiality* as an inherent aspect of all human language use.
Referentiality empirically and cross-linguistically exhibits a number of
forms ranging from maximally generic and indefinite to definite, rigid,
deictic (indexical), and finally personal (1st or 2nd) ones. These forms
are *hierarchically ordered* in the sense that an indefinite form such as *a
green car *functions referentially through the mediation of a *lexical
description* (being a CAR and GREEN), while no such description appears in
forms of reference such as *that *or *it*. Present evidence supports, as a
heuristic hypothesis, that (i) all of these forms of reference bi-uniquely
correspond to specific grammatical *configurations*, (ii) grammatical
organization in language never corresponds to anything *other* than
specific forms of reference in one of three domains (the nominal, verbal,
or clausal), (iii) *lexical* organization of meaning as such exhibits *none*
of these forms, and (iv) these forms directly correspond to the fact that
all meaning in language has a *formal ontology* in the sense that whenever
we refer, the referents are formally individuated as properties, masses,
objects, persons, events, propositions, facts, etc. I argue that if grammar
is the organizational and cognitive principle behind these forms, and the
lexicon (semantic memory) feeds in lexicalized concepts (categories), it is
not clear what else is needed for a theory of thought, making an *independent
*category of thought (and a ‘language of thought’) potentially redundant.
As language is intrinsically social and shared, and social cognition in
humans is intrinsically linguistic, it is not clear that ‘social cognition’
can be an independent variable either.
This makes the prediction that disorders of thought should have
specific *grammatical
correlates* (insofar as thought of the relevant type is inherently
referential). In the second part of the talk, I review evidence collected
over several decades in the study of language in schizophrenia and autism,
as well as recent evidence from our own lab, to test this prediction. The
evidence suggests that there is a clinical dimension to the hierarchy of
reference above, insofar as the higher regions of the hierarchy (definites
and above) are more impaired across disorders than the lower ones,
with *grammatical
Person* in particular as a particularly vulnerable dimension in the
cognitive and linguistic profiles of both autism and schizophrenia.
We are looking forward to see you!
Cognitive Science Events at CEU:
http://cognitivescience.ceu.hu/events
--
Barbara Pomiechowska
Cognitive Development Center
Central European University
Budpest, Hungary
Web:
http://www.babakutato.hu/lab-members
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