Even deeper problems with neural network models of language.

We recognize today's deep neural network (DNN) models of language behaviors as engineering achievements. However, what we know intuitively and scientifically about language shows that what DNNs are and how they are trained on bare texts, makes them poor models of mind and brain for language organization, as it interacts with infant biology, maturation, experience, unique principles, and natural law.

How Cognition came into being.

Jacques Mehler and I started Cognition, to break the grip of empiricist associationist behaviorism and stultifying style requirements on scientific discourse, and to liberate Cognitive Psychology's contributions to social issues. The journal provided opportunities for upcoming generations to expand Cognitive Psychology, publishing new concepts unhindered by established topics and standard formats. As the journal matured, Jacques kept. it fresh for 4 decades, seeking young scientists, novel ideas, and elegant writing, as it midwifed the emergence from Reductionist Behaviorism through Cognitive Psychology to rationalist Cognitive Science. The journal now has opportunities to nurture further progress in the future of Cognitive Science. I speculate that the field will keep associationist processes but integrate them with a new kind of non-reductionist theory that eschews detailed predictions, and which which interprets the brain as an enactor of thought, but not its structural cause. Ideally it will provide a set of constraints on the action of brain and mind that subsume and explain behavioral regularities, the role of frequency, how the brain externalizes those constraints and how the externalization processes emerge developmentally as a function of innate factors, structures unique to the mind and brain, experience and natural law.

Many important language universals are not reducible to processing or cognition.

Christiansen & Chater (C&C) ignore the many linguistic universals that cannot be reduced to processing or cognitive constraints, some of which we present. Their claim that grammar is merely acquired language processing skill cannot account for such universals. Their claim that all other universal properties are historically and culturally based is a nonsequitur about language evolution, lacking data.

Role of the striatum in language: Syntactic and conceptual sequencing.

The basal ganglia (BG) have long been associated with cognitive control, and it is widely accepted that they also subserve an indirect, control role in language. Nevertheless, it cannot be completely ruled out that the BG may be involved in language in some domain-specific manner. The present study aimed to investigate one type of cognitive control-sequencing, a function that has long been connected with the BG-and to test whether the BG could be specifically implicated in language. Participants were required to rearrange materials sequentially based on linguistic (syntactic or conceptual) or non-linguistic (order switching) rules, or to repeat a previously ordered sequence as a control task. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data revealed a strongly active left-lateralized corticostriatal network, encompassing the anterior striatum, dorsolaterial and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and presupplementary motor area, while the participants were sequencing materials using linguistic vs. non-linguistic rules. This functional network has an anatomical basis and is strikingly similar to the well-known associative loop implicated in sensorimotor sequence learning. We concluded that the anterior striatum has extended its original sequencing role and worked in concert with frontal cortical regions to subserve the function of linguistic sequencing in a domain-specific manner.

Cerebral dominance in musicians and nonmusicians. 1974.

Musically experienced listeners recognize simple melodies better in the right ear than the left, while the reverse is true for naive listeners. Hence, contrary to previous reports, music perception supports the hypothesis that the left hemisphere is dominant for analytic processing and the right hemisphere for holistic processing.

The time course for language acquisition in biologically distinct populations: evidence from deaf individuals.

The present study provides evidence that individuals who have different patterns of cerebral lateralization and who develop along different maturational time courses can attain comparable levels of language proficiency. Right-handed individuals with left-handed family members (left-handed familials, LHFs) showed a shorter sensitive period for language acquisition than did right-handed individuals with only right-handed family members (right-handed familials, RHFs). The shorter sensitive period for LHFs may be due to a focus on non-linguistic, word-based conceptual information during language acquisition. RHFs may focus on grammatical relations during language acquisition, which matures later than lexical knowledge. This suggests that there may be different patterns of cerebral lateralization for language in all normal populations as a function of familial handedness.