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UID:20260706T112520EDT-3187GGjuZS@132.216.98.100
DTSTAMP:20260706T152520Z
DESCRIPTION: \nAssessing the relationship between language\, cognition\, an
 d\nculture: The Pirahã\nCRLMB Distinguished Lecture Series - Presentation 
 by Dr.\nTed Gibson\, Professor of Brain & Cognitive Sciences\nand Linguist
 ics at the MIT\nMonday\, February 2\, 2009 at 12:00 pm -1:30 pm\nLocation:
  Room 501\, 91ºÚÁÏÍø Cancer Pavilion\, Life Sciences Complex\,\n1160 Pine Av
 enue West\nAbstract\nA foundational assumption of many researchers investi
 gating the\nuniversals of human language is that many properties of langua
 ge\nare independent of the cultural context and the non-linguistic\ncognit
 ive abilities of the(ir) speakers.  But it's not clear\nthat this assumpti
 on is warranted.  Everett (2005) described\nthe case of the Pirahã\, an is
 olated Amazonian tribe who are\nallegedly characterized by very unusual li
 nguistic and\nnon-linguistic cognitive properties (e.g.\, finite language\
 , lack of\nwords for numbers and colors\, lack of quantifiers). \nCritical
 ly\, he argued that all these properties can be accounted\nfor by a genera
 l cultural constraint against abstraction.  The\nvalidity of these claims 
 remains an open question.  I will\nreport some initial results from a set 
 of experiments I conducted\nin collaboration with Mike Frank and Ev Fedore
 nko during a visit to\na Pirahã village in 2007 in order to test some of t
 hese claims.\nFollowed by:\nThe nature of working memory resources underly
 ing language\nprocessing\nCRLMB Distinguished Lecture Series - Presentatio
 n by Dr.\nEv  Fedorenko\, postdoctoral associate at the\nKanwisher Lab (Mc
 Govern Institute for Brain Research) at MIT\nMonday\, February 2\, 2009 at
  1:30 pm -2:30 pm\nLocation: Location: Room 501\, 91ºÚÁÏÍø Cancer Pavilion\,
  Life Sciences\nComplex\, 1160 Pine Avenue West\nAbstract\nA fundamental q
 uestion in cognitive science concerns the extent to\nwhich our mind consis
 ts of independent cognitive modules —\nsubserved by highly specialized neu
 ral structures — dedicated to\nspecific cognitive functions.  I investigat
 e this question\nwith regard to the working memory resources underlying la
 nguage\nprocessing.  I present a series of behavioral studies aimed at\nin
 vestigating the extent to which the working memory system\nunderlying lang
 uage processing is domain-specific.  I argue\nthat the results of these ex
 periments demonstrate that at least\nsome aspects of the working memory sy
 stem used for linguistic\nintegrations are not domain-specific\, being inv
 olved in arithmetic\,\nand possibly\, musical processing.\n
DTSTART:20090202T170000Z
DTEND:20090202T193000Z
LOCATION:CA\, 1160 Pine Ave. West\, 1160 Pine Ave. West\, Cancer Pavilion\,
  Life Sciences complex\, Montreal
SUMMARY:CRLMB Distinguished Lecture Series: Drs. Ted Gibson and Ev Fedorenk
 o
URL:/channels/event/crlmb-distinguished-lecture-series
 -drs-ted-gibson-and-ev-fedorenko-104178
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