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Language is primarily a tool for communication rather than thought.
Fedorenko, Evelina; Piantadosi, Steven T; Gibson, Edward A F.
Afiliação
  • Fedorenko E; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA. evelina9@mit.edu.
  • Piantadosi ST; Speech and Hearing in Bioscience and Technology Program at Harvard University, Boston, MA, USA. evelina9@mit.edu.
  • Gibson EAF; University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA.
Nature ; 630(8017): 575-586, 2024 Jun.
Article em En | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-38898296
ABSTRACT
Language is a defining characteristic of our species, but the function, or functions, that it serves has been debated for centuries. Here we bring recent evidence from neuroscience and allied disciplines to argue that in modern humans, language is a tool for communication, contrary to a prominent view that we use language for thinking. We begin by introducing the brain network that supports linguistic ability in humans. We then review evidence for a double dissociation between language and thought, and discuss several properties of language that suggest that it is optimized for communication. We conclude that although the emergence of language has unquestionably transformed human culture, language does not appear to be a prerequisite for complex thought, including symbolic thought. Instead, language is a powerful tool for the transmission of cultural knowledge; it plausibly co-evolved with our thinking and reasoning capacities, and only reflects, rather than gives rise to, the signature sophistication of human cognition.
Assuntos

Texto completo: 1 Base de dados: MEDLINE Assunto principal: Pensamento / Encéfalo / Cognição / Comunicação / Idioma Limite: Animals / Humans Idioma: En Ano de publicação: 2024 Tipo de documento: Article

Texto completo: 1 Base de dados: MEDLINE Assunto principal: Pensamento / Encéfalo / Cognição / Comunicação / Idioma Limite: Animals / Humans Idioma: En Ano de publicação: 2024 Tipo de documento: Article