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This book introduces readers to the state-of-the-art neuroscientific research that is revolutionizing our understanding of language. Interest in the brain bases of language goes back to the birth of the modern neurosciences in the late nineteenth century. Today, tools such as fMRI and EEG allow us to study brain activity non-invasively as people perform complex cognitive tasks like talking or reading. In this book, Jonathan Brennan shows how brain signals are connected with the intricate cognitive structures that underlie human language. Each chapter focuses on specific insights including the neural codes for speech perception, meaning, and sentence structure. The book also explores larger themes such as how to connect abstract notions like knowing a language to concrete signals that are measured in a laboratory, and how to reconcile apparently conflicting pieces of data that arise from different experiments. Written in an accessible, conversational style, and featuring a glossary of key terms, this slim guide will appeal to a wide range of readers interested in how the human brain allows us to use language.
This book explores the cognitive plausibility of computational language models and why it’s an important factor in their development and evaluation. The authors present the idea that more can be learned about cognitive plausibility of computational language models by linking signals of cognitive processing load in humans to interpretability methods that allow for exploration of the hidden mechanisms of neural models. The book identifies limitations when applying the existing methodology for representational analyses to contextualized settings and critiques the current emphasis on form over more grounded approaches to modeling language. The authors discuss how novel techniques for transfer and curriculum learning could lead to cognitively more plausible generalization capabilities in models. The book also highlights the importance of instance-level evaluation and includes thorough discussion of the ethical considerations that may arise throughout the various stages of cognitive plausibility research.
The sixth edition of the foundational reference on cognitive neuroscience, with entirely new material that covers the latest research, experimental approaches, and measurement methodologies. Each edition of this classic reference has proved to be a benchmark in the developing field of cognitive neuroscience. The sixth edition of The Cognitive Neurosciences continues to chart new directions in the study of the biological underpinnings of complex cognition—the relationship between the structural and physiological mechanisms of the nervous system and the psychological reality of the mind. It offers entirely new material, reflecting recent advances in the field, covering the latest research, e...
A COMPANION TO CHOMSKY Widely considered to be one of the most important public intellectuals of our time, Noam Chomsky has revolutionized modern linguistics. His thought has had a profound impact upon the philosophy of language, mind, and science, as well as the interdisciplinary field of cognitive science which his work helped to establish. Now, in this new Companion dedicated to his substantial body of work and the range of its influence, an international assembly of prominent linguists, philosophers, and cognitive scientists reflect upon the interdisciplinary reach of Chomsky’s intellectual contributions. Balancing theoretical rigor with accessibility to the non-specialist, the Compani...
This volume will appeal to anyone interested in knowing more about the fundamental building blocks of language: words. It brings together the fields of linguistics, neuroscience, psycholinguistics, speech-language pathology, and language education to present multifaceted perspectives on the topic of vocabulary. The theoretical and empirical contributions included consider some of the key questions facing the field, such as What is the mental lexicon? What constitutes a word? What are new and novel approaches to measuring and researching vocabulary? and What is the best way to teach vocabulary? This book will be useful to graduate students and scholars in the fields of theoretical linguistics, psycholinguistics, applied linguistics, adult and child language acquisition, and modern languages. In addition, it will appeal to language educators at various institutions, immigrant service specialists, school board officials, and study abroad consultants.
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This volume showcases the contributions that formal experimental methods can make to syntactic research in the 21st century. Syntactic theory is both a domain of study in its own right, and one component of an integrated theory of the cognitive neuroscience of language. It provides a theory of the mediation between sound and meaning, a theory of the representations constructed during sentence processing, and a theory of the end-state for language acquisition. Given the highly interactive nature of the theory of syntax, this volume defines "experimental syntax" in the broadest possible terms, exploring both formal experimental methods that have been part of the domain of syntax since its ince...
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