Words, thoughts, and brains

ABSTRACT

Knowledge of the world is fundamental to human thought and ability to navigate the world, and a large literature has accumulated on the neuroscience of semantic memory. Because language serves as one of the most important interfaces between the private world of thought and other people, researchers often tap into semantic memory through word-based tasks. But this approach fails to acknowledge crucial distinctions between word meaning and general-purpose, non-linguistic knowledge. This article will discuss the relation between words and non-linguistic representations, drawing in part on evidence about cross-linguistic lexical diversity. It will argue that a more nuanced consideration of the language-thought interface is needed in the neuroscience of concepts.

KEYWORDS:

• Semantic memory
• word meaning
• cross-linguistic

Acknowledgements

I thank Lila Chrysikou, David Kemmerer, and Brad Mahon for comments on an earlier draft, and Silvia Gennari, Mutsumi Imai, Asifa Majid, Steven Sloman, and Phil Wolff for past collaboration in developing some of the ideas covered here.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.