7 The Literate Brain Flashcards
lexico-semantic route
Convert visual information and read it out loud in speech production
Two possible routes
Lexical semantic route. Word from understand meaning access pronounciation and then read it out loud
phonological route
Correspondence between letter features and how they should be pronounced and can convert that through graphemes to phoneme conversion through this route then read it out loud
reading
communicating some sort of meaning
how meaning is represented in the brain
chinese room problem
Sitting in a room with dictionary
Input - look in dictionary and see it means that
Looks as if understood Chinese language but not really
Can convert one character to other but its just random
If swap character makes no difference bc no rules or constraints to say this character has to be explained by this character
Arbitrary
No meaning to any of the symbols
the third dictionary
Third dictionary
Meaning provided - images
Perceptual experience meaning
More meaningful than random characters
One is experience based and one is symbol based
Two kinds of meaning form basis of two theories about how meaning is represented in the brain
what are the two ways language meaning is mentally represented
amodal experience
embodied cognition theory
amodal experience
Amodal symbol
All mental representation abstract codes or symbols
Amodal symbol system
Representational system
problems with amodal symbols
no rules telling you which symbols to use
computer like
letters digits binary codes
No intrinsic physical differences between the symbols
Same thing different values
Expected to be processed and represented in one place inside the brain
Transistors - neurons
Firing or not firing use to represent a 1 or 0
Code - symbolic language
embodied cogntition theory
Cannot be symbols bc just random
Different parts of chair transduced through selective attention
Focus on different parts of the experience
E.g. shape colour tactile experience of sitting on chair remember sensations
Representations are experience based
what is embodied cognition theory
Experienced based
Different kind of experiences processed and represented in different sensory systems
Motor systems - motor experiences
Auditory - sounds
Multi-sensory representation of that concept
Some physical resemblance to the actual meaning the language is trying to refer to
mental representations as abstract symbols
Abstract symbols Access its actual meanings Number of things in world to refer to The symbols themselves aren’t different Binary code not instrinsically different just have different values Can’t distinguish
Symbols randomly arbitrarily generated
Not grounded in anything
Symbols random and abstract- no meaning itself
No constraints to force them to refer to a particular thing or meaning
what is the symbol grounding problem
E.g. stuff or thingy
Can refer to anything
Then itself has no meaning
Only meaning when has certain constraints and can only refer to one thing and not the other
mental representations as seonsory experiences
Activate sensory experience
Mental simulation
A form of imagery
Reactivates certain elements of chair - shape texture
Depends on what meaning you need to access for your current purpose
Chair among objects - shape
Perceptual Visio spatial representation about the chair
Can make physical contraints
Certain physical constraints
Refer to actual meaning
what is activation in embodied cognition
mental simulation
behavioral observations in amodal
language has nothing to do with perception and action
Language processed in central processing unit Dealing with symbols Nothing to do with perception and action Totally different Two things are independent
behavioural observations in embodied cognition
Language processing itself will interact with ongoing perception and action
Language meaning
Perceptual and motor experiences interacting with chair
Mental representation for meaning - sensory experiences
Make very different predictions if you were to do experiments looking at language processing in perception and action
